Advisers need claims data from private medical insurers for SME clients to fulfil their regulatory objectives, the Association of Medical Insurers and Intermediaries (AMII) spring summit has heard.
Gallagher corporate client team lead Anders Lewis, who has also just joined the AMII executive committee, made an impassioned plea for insurers to be more proactive and aligned in making claims data for this major market segment available.
“How can a broker demonstrate the value if you can’t tell a customer how much they’ve been using something that they’re buying?” Lee (pictured centre right) asked the audience.
Lee then compared the four main insurers and highlighted that there were four different approaches being taken.
“One, you get the loss ratio – great, that’s how the industry works, we can all work with that,” he continued.
“Another you get nothing, one it depends on which day of the week you ask, and then on the other you’ll get a window of loss ratio.
“So that can’t be a sensible approach and that’s something I’m going to try and work on because that’s been the same forever, and we can do better than that.
“That will evidence to the FCA if it comes knocking, what value is being driven not just from what a broker is doing, but also the policy that we’re selling as well.”
‘None of it’s identifiable’
Expanding on his concerns, Lewis highlighted the difference between what was available for large corporate schemes compared to SMEs and argued that data protection and privacy were not necessarily concerns.
“In the large corporate world you get lovely 40-page management information packs that you can run through with all sorts of good information around customer journey and pathways and the rest of it,” he continued.
“It’s the SME sector that is missing out on all of that and often it falls on data protection being the reason it can’t be given.
“But none of it’s going to be identifiable, this is about a journey and outcomes.
“We don’t want to know an individual made a claim, that’s not what it’s about, but it just appears it’s treated very differently and we can’t evidence then what is happening in that huge sector of SMEs.”
‘Understanding the data’
However, Aviva Health head of health governance and financial promotions Alexander Bennett-Marsden said there were some key issues which made publishing more information difficult.
Bennett-Marsden (pictured far right) noted that comparing different provider data can be like comparing apples to oranges.
“If I’ve calculated my claims decline rate differently to another provider, that’s pretty useless to you, so it’s also about having that understanding of how the data is done,” he said.
“The other thing is I’m very conscious of the burden that we put on you guys as well out there, which is – we need to show value across our distributors, we’ll send out a survey to all of you.
“Then you get one from every single provider asking: ‘Can you give me this? Can you give me that?”
He argued there needed to be a flexible balance found for this situation.
“That’s what I think we mean when it’s that kind of foothills of trying to get the right balance, get the right amount of information,” he said.
“And not make it so burdensome that you’re not talking to your clients and actually doing the good customer outcomes, which I think we’re doing.
“But it is about evidencing it and getting it right.”
