The Health Compass international private medical insurance (IPMI) product comparison service which launched in April has ambitions to connect advisers around the world and bring local PMI plans onto its platform.
The firm is working with intermediaries in Asia, the Middle East, France and the UK already as it continues development and rollout among the adviser community.
Health Compass founder David Eline, who conceived the system while as an adviser, tells Health & Protection he has significant hopes for the business and its growth.
One of the clearest messages Eline conveys is that he has given up the original advice business to concentrate all his energy on the firm and to avoid any potential conflicts of interest when working with brokers.
Along with quote comparisons Health Compass examines the wider benefits and attributes of provider propositions, includer customer and adviser service, Eline explains.
“We study all the benefits, what I call those heart benefits that are stated in your table of benefits,” he says.
“We added the new scoring before the launch and it includes insurer service, such as turnaround time when you submit a claim, if there is a multi-language desk and multi-channel communication possibilities and the customer satisfaction.
“Because IPMI is not about money. There are going to be price takers until there’s a problem and people complain. So we are scoring price, the benefits, but also the service.”
‘We are perceived as a connector’
Launching a new idea into any market is always a big step and Eline recognises it will take time for the proposition to filter through and give people the chance to adapt to new ways of working.
“There is a huge convincing exercise for people to see the advantage of Health Compass,” he says.
“On one hand they might get recognition regarding the innovation, the tools, the technology and when it comes to market fit it is making people revert to a new mentality.”
But Eline believes his hard work so far is showing through and that the insurance industry is beginning to understand he wants to be known as more than simply a price aggregator.
“We are actually the next generation of what should really be insurance corporations,” he says.
“Forget being a price aggregator, this is not us – of course, we need to give a price because people are going to buy a cover at the end of the day.
“It took time, but insurance companies now view us like the diversification of the distribution. They don’t view us as competing with the insurance world and MGAs.
“We are not competing with the distribution world of the brokers, we are perceived now like a connector, like an enabler.
“But it took time to convince them because so many people went to insurers, building another price aggregator and getting them to give up their pricing secrets to the competition that they went on the defensive stand.”
Building a network of advisers
This approach of being a connector and facilitator through the industry is key to Eline’s ambition for Health Compass and his hope to make it a network of advisers of sorts – connecting firms and people to support transactions.
In the global industry this is particularly important where local regulations are becoming further entrenched and demanding, such as requiring firms be based in that particular jurisdiction.
Eline is operating under some of these complexities already, with Health Compass regulated in France and using passporting rules to offer services across the EU, but is based in the UK under the temporary permissions regime (TPR).
Geographical compliance has been a significant investment for in building the operation.
Most of the time in transactions completed through it, Health Compass is the broker, but where this is not possible, Eline hopes the system will lead to it connecting advisers in differing locations.
“Sometimes in some jurisdictions we cannot be the broker, such as Dubai for instance,” he says.
“So the system is going to use a local partner to team up on those transactions. That means we are de facto building an electronic, worldwide broker network.
“A broker that has a customer but not the right licenses can team up with somebody that has the right license.”
Eline sees this as being a more flexible way of allowing brokers to operate worldwide on cases without having to put formal partnerships in place.
This may be particularly useful for those who only do cross-border cases on an occasional basis.
Rival to existing networks?
But what of the global adviser networks already in place? Does Eline see himself as a rival to these operations?
“I think it will improve life because I could equip these people with our technology,” he says.
“There’s always going to be pushback when you move from something which is a really human way to do business to something which is electronically-based.
“I am not someone that believes everything has to be purely digital and no human interaction. For me, my technology has to work hand in hand with the human broker.
“I’m not here to substitute myself for the broker, especially in a market like IPMI which is high-touch, you need great advice.
“Health Compass is not looking after final business, so we are not competing with the brokers that would be using our system.”
Partner due diligence and compliance
Navigating the international compliance maze also means advisers wanting to know who they would be doing business through on the other end, hosting their business and client.
Such due diligence is increasingly important.
“Compliance would have been made at the insurance level, but the local partner and anybody working with Health Compus has to go through some compliance checks,” Eline says.
“Is the person properly regulated in their own country as insurance intermediary? Do they have indemnity protection?”
The firm also conducts simple background checks which may be ignored by some such as basic Google searches looking for adverse news and reports.
But Eline concedes he does not substitute himself as a broker when ultimately making that decision to place the case.
“I only give brokers tools to get as much information to help them in their duty to advise. So the responsibility of the advice remains on them,” he says.
“I guess I gave pre-digested information regarding the quality and the compatibility of the product to the customer.
“He has all the documents that he needs. But at the end of the day, I am not talking to the customer, the broker is.”
Adding more plans and IT capacity
Another development Eline is hoping to add to the platform, following requests from those using it, is more local and regional PMI plans.
And an increase in the number of plans available would need further investment in the platform’s technology that underpins the reviews and assessments.
“One of the big evolutions would be to add local PMI plans on the platform. Now also, we are working on IT solutions to increase our processing capability of insurance studies,” he says.
“We built a great methodology to model and score insurance products but now we need to increase our processing capability to automatically model input into our system.
“This is one of our big projects, that would be something, say 18 to 24 months’ time where we will be able to grow exponentially the number of products on the platform.
“Not because we will be hiring millions of analysts but because we’re going to get analysts working along with technology to reduce the time which is required to properly analyse the product on the platform.”
Dream for parametric products
As for the market itself, Eline sees significant desire for more modularity and flexibility in products offered by insurers, but suspects the underlying technology, underwriting and business models may not permit or be able to facilitate this for several years.
“My dream, we’re talking ten years’ time, do we build totally parametric IPMI products that means that we, the insurance advisers, the customer, are deciding how big a benefit they want?” he explains.
“Let’s say I don’t need 4,000 but I want 1,000 cover. I want that benefit, not this one. That would be my dream.
“That would be a nightmare from an actuary point of view. And it’s not only the pricing of the product, but what claims system do you have behind it?
“So there is a demand from the market to go to parametric insurance, but it’s not feasible today, especially in IPMI.”