
**Luca Schnettler**, CEO, Qumata

Examining the future of underwriting in the life and health insurance industry

No industries, economic sectors or markets have been left untouched by the implacable transformation driven by
digitisation, technology and innovation. Financial services are at the forefront of this disruption and transformation, as seen in the explosion of startups and unicorns in the digital financial technology space.
Insurance, arguably the last bastion of finance has not escaped this wave of change, with the rise of insurance technology (insurtech) across the globe. The insurance industry has long been dominated by traditional business models, structures, and processes. The industry has been reluctant to change without regulation.
A perfect example of this is underwriting within life and health insurance to price applicants, which has presented barriers to change. This process is well-known for its lengthy questionnaires, potential medical exam requirements and slow approvals for applicants. If simplified is deployed, this can lead to additionally loaded products. There are new innovative ways that have been launched to help streamline these processes without major additional risk or cost using alternative data sources, to assist the underwriting process.
Underwriting, the process insurers use to determine a fair price for
the coverage of the risk is done by medical underwriting in the life
and health insurance industry.
An applicant’s health or life insurance coverage will be evaluated through an examination of their medical history, a fundamental aspect of the process. The pricing of any subsequent coverage granted is quantified by analysing the risk factors of the applicant’s responses to a series of questions supplemented by their medical history and a lifestyle questionnaire. Self-declaration integrity also plays a big part in the process.

The process of medical underwriting to price individual policies broadly still follows traditional methodologies deployed and
adopted by life and health insurance, and reinsurance firms around the world. Methods deployed can be
online or paper-based and can be time-consuming for both policy applicants as well as the insurance and reinsurance companies. Data collection in this manner can differ from country to country. For many insurers and reinsurers, it is time-consuming and
a challenge to maintain applicants records and track changes to circumstances. This process can be costly, laborious and daunting to applicants and create an unfavourable buyer’s journey.
A result of these relative inefficiencies is variable conversion rates. In the UK, 90 per cent of the UK Life business is written by the intermediated market, by telephone or face to face. Details are keyed in an electronic application by an advisor. In Asia, the process is similar but usually more face to face by an agent. Conversion here is higher compared to self-service applications directly made online where numbers are high, but conversion is low. Higher dropout rates can be a result of providing hard evidence of medical exams, frustration of the lengthy process and, in many cases, dropouts can simply be influenced by changing consumer habits, where consumers are used to faster, straight through processing and more choices based on price when purchasing goods and services of all types.

###### This new data-driven way to price life and health policies for applicants is rapidly garnering interest and offers a prime example

###### of digital innovation transforming the life and health ecosystem

#### Data-Driven Approach

Alternative data is an innovative way to help insurers and reinsurers price policies using individual applicants’ health activity and other digitally stored wellness data, with the added advantage of being almost instantaneous.
Such data is captured from individuals stored data within smartphones and wearables, making use of information that is real, lifestyle driven and readily available. This new data-driven way
to price life and health policies for applicants is rapidly garnering interest and offers a prime example
of digital innovation transforming the life and health ecosystem.
Qumata is a global leader in this transformation of underwriting for life and health insurers, that will improve customer experience and help insurers realise new revenue opportunities and save costs, while maintaining the levels of accuracy obtained by traditional methods. Qumata, founded in 2017 and now with offices across Europe and Asia, uses this alternative digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions and related product loadings based on their Extra mortality & morbidity, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor.

The firm’s proprietary solution is a semi-supervised machine learning algorithm built on a range of large datasets. The company’s algorithm has been validated by leading academic institutions, as well as insurers and reinsurers across Europe, Asia and the US who are already actively using Qumata’s solution for underwriting.
Qumata boasts a track record of positive feasibility studies, conducted in the ‘proof of concept’ (POC) stage with major global insurance and reinsurance firms which are conducted prior to these organisations becoming clients. These POCs have shown the accuracy of underwriting is at least on par with the data emanating from traditional methods, while the speed, ease of use and efficiency provide significant improvements to the process. It is this speed which makes these data driven solutions really stand out.

#### Speeding Up Processes

Alternative data is an innovative way to help insurers and reinsurers price policies using individual applicants’ health activity and other digitally stored wellness data, with the added advantage of being almost instantaneous.
Such data is captured from individuals stored data within smartphones and wearables, making use of information that is real, lifestyle driven and readily available. This new data-driven way
to price life and health policies for applicants is rapidly garnering interest and offers a prime example
of digital innovation transforming the life and health ecosystem.
Qumata is a global leader in this transformation of underwriting for life and health insurers, that will improve customer experience and help insurers realise new revenue opportunities and save costs, while maintaining the levels of accuracy obtained by traditional methods. Qumata, founded in 2017 and now with offices across Europe and Asia, uses this alternative digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions and related product loadings based on their Extra mortality & morbidity, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor.

The firm’s proprietary solution is a semi-supervised machine learning algorithm built on a range of large datasets. The company’s algorithm has been validated by leading academic institutions, as well as insurers and reinsurers across Europe, Asia and the US who are already actively using Qumata’s solution for underwriting.
Qumata boasts a track record of positive feasibility studies, conducted in the ‘proof of concept’ (POC) stage with major global insurance and reinsurance firms which are conducted prior to these organisations becoming clients. These POCs have shown the accuracy of underwriting is at least on par with the data emanating from traditional methods, while the speed, ease of use and efficiency provide significant improvements to the process. It is this speed which makes these data driven solutions really stand out.

Studies published in the past few months, including one from Munich
Re, show the average underwriting process for the ‘traditional’ method can take several days to process.
Even simplified methods, such as those sometimes adopted in the UK currently, require the longer questionnaires
to be completed at a later date after a quotation is given. In some markets like India, more than
50 per cent of consumers are asked to go for a medical exam which in turn creates further costs and inefficiencies
into the process.

With Qumata, the whole underwriting process can be reduced to under three minutes on average. The company’s API-based solution, once implemented into an insurer’s backend, allows for a new way of underwriting, making it faster, cheaper, and just as accurate. Insurers can use these solutions to provide a more seamless, modern customer digital experience and realise new revenue opportunities.
Such revenue opportunities include the ability for insurers to use this alternative data to flag and track circumstantial changes to individuals’ health and wellness activity. This
can lead to the identification of valuable new cross-sell opportunities with pre-approval to existing customers or offer an immediate price for new health or life insurance policies.
A further potential area of lead generation comes from insurers
expanding their digital partnerships with telecoms or banking firms. A partner platform can send data to Qumata who will create a risk profile which the insurer can use to pre-approve a price for a prospective customer and market to them.
For all these journeys, Qumata can also enable insurers to implement dynamic underwriting and improve conversion rates. After a set timeframe, Qumata can reassess the risk of a customer and adjust the price accordingly. Furthermore, Qumata can be used to augment traditional underwriting processes by allowing insurers to identify healthy applicants and provide them with further discounts, or higher sums assured.
In essence, Qumata embraces digital innovation to help streamline, simplify, augment and in some cases replace the traditional methods of life and health underwriting. Qumata seeks to propel digital innovation in the following ways:

- The use of AI and data-based technology principles allowing the insurance ecosystem to modernise its underwriting business and its operations but at the same time providing a more positive experience for the buyer.
- Develops new revenue opportunities for insurers and reinsurers and value-added services for the benefit of their policyholders, using consistent tracking of personalised alternative activity and wellness data sources.
- Fosters a collaborative ecosystem where innovative service providers like Qumata, insurers, re-insurers and other partners can cooperate to bring about transformation of the underwriting process which in turn yield higher success rates in policy purchase. Digital innovation is key to accelerating and transforming the more traditional insurance business.

Insurtech is growing in terms of importance and digital technology providers like Qumata hold the keys to modernising traditional underwriting in the life and health insurance industry. The vision is to revolutionise
the future of underwriting and bring it forth into the
digital age.

#### About Qumata

Founded in 2017, Qumata (formerly known as HealthyHealth) is on a mission to transform insurance underwriting – offering a faster way to access individual health forecasts without losing accuracy of traditional questionnaires or medical exams. Our solutions unlocks insights into an individual’s current and future health and mortality risks, for anyone equipped with a smartphone, instantaneously and without medical questionnaires or examinations. We work with Life and Health insurers to help them create a faster, more customer-centric underwriting journey, providing the extra-mortality, extra-morbidity and other parameters for any individual and for 800 medical conditions.


Luca Schnettler, CEO, Qumata
Examining the future of underwriting in the life and health insurance industry
No industries, economic sectors or markets have been left untouched by the implacable transformation driven by
digitisation, technology and innovation. Financial services are at the forefront of this disruption and transformation, as seen in the explosion of startups and unicorns in the digital financial technology space.
Insurance, arguably the last bastion of finance has not escaped this wave of change, with the rise of insurance technology (insurtech) across the globe. The insurance industry has long been dominated by traditional business models, structures, and processes. The industry has been reluctant to change without regulation.
A perfect example of this is underwriting within life and health insurance to price applicants, which has presented barriers to change. This process is well-known for its lengthy questionnaires, potential medical exam requirements and slow approvals for applicants. If simplified is deployed, this can lead to additionally loaded products. There are new innovative ways that have been launched to help streamline these processes without major additional risk or cost using alternative data sources, to assist the underwriting process.
Underwriting, the process insurers use to determine a fair price for
the coverage of the risk is done by medical underwriting in the life
and health insurance industry.
An applicant’s health or life insurance coverage will be evaluated through an examination of their medical history, a fundamental aspect of the process. The pricing of any subsequent coverage granted is quantified by analysing the risk factors of the applicant’s responses to a series of questions supplemented by their medical history and a lifestyle questionnaire. Self-declaration integrity also plays a big part in the process.
The process of medical underwriting to price individual policies broadly still follows traditional methodologies deployed and
adopted by life and health insurance, and reinsurance firms around the world. Methods deployed can be
online or paper-based and can be time-consuming for both policy applicants as well as the insurance and reinsurance companies. Data collection in this manner can differ from country to country. For many insurers and reinsurers, it is time-consuming and
a challenge to maintain applicants records and track changes to circumstances. This process can be costly, laborious and daunting to applicants and create an unfavourable buyer’s journey.
A result of these relative inefficiencies is variable conversion rates. In the UK, 90 per cent of the UK Life business is written by the intermediated market, by telephone or face to face. Details are keyed in an electronic application by an advisor. In Asia, the process is similar but usually more face to face by an agent. Conversion here is higher compared to self-service applications directly made online where numbers are high, but conversion is low. Higher dropout rates can be a result of providing hard evidence of medical exams, frustration of the lengthy process and, in many cases, dropouts can simply be influenced by changing consumer habits, where consumers are used to faster, straight through processing and more choices based on price when purchasing goods and services of all types.
<h6>This new data-driven way to price life and health policies for applicants is rapidly garnering interest and offers a prime example</h6>
<h6>of digital innovation transforming the life and health ecosystem</h6>
<h4>Data-Driven Approach</h4>
Alternative data is an innovative way to help insurers and reinsurers price policies using individual applicants’ health activity and other digitally stored wellness data, with the added advantage of being almost instantaneous.
Such data is captured from individuals stored data within smartphones and wearables, making use of information that is real, lifestyle driven and readily available. This new data-driven way
to price life and health policies for applicants is rapidly garnering interest and offers a prime example
of digital innovation transforming the life and health ecosystem.
Qumata is a global leader in this transformation of underwriting for life and health insurers, that will improve customer experience and help insurers realise new revenue opportunities and save costs, while maintaining the levels of accuracy obtained by traditional methods. Qumata, founded in 2017 and now with offices across Europe and Asia, uses this alternative digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions and related product loadings based on their Extra mortality &#x26; morbidity, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor.
The firm’s proprietary solution is a semi-supervised machine learning algorithm built on a range of large datasets. The company’s algorithm has been validated by leading academic institutions, as well as insurers and reinsurers across Europe, Asia and the US who are already actively using Qumata’s solution for underwriting.
Qumata boasts a track record of positive feasibility studies, conducted in the ‘proof of concept’ (POC) stage with major global insurance and reinsurance firms which are conducted prior to these organisations becoming clients. These POCs have shown the accuracy of underwriting is at least on par with the data emanating from traditional methods, while the speed, ease of use and efficiency provide significant improvements to the process. It is this speed which makes these data driven solutions really stand out.
<h4>Speeding Up Processes</h4>
Alternative data is an innovative way to help insurers and reinsurers price policies using individual applicants’ health activity and other digitally stored wellness data, with the added advantage of being almost instantaneous.
Such data is captured from individuals stored data within smartphones and wearables, making use of information that is real, lifestyle driven and readily available. This new data-driven way
to price life and health policies for applicants is rapidly garnering interest and offers a prime example
of digital innovation transforming the life and health ecosystem.
Qumata is a global leader in this transformation of underwriting for life and health insurers, that will improve customer experience and help insurers realise new revenue opportunities and save costs, while maintaining the levels of accuracy obtained by traditional methods. Qumata, founded in 2017 and now with offices across Europe and Asia, uses this alternative digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions and related product loadings based on their Extra mortality &#x26; morbidity, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor.
The firm’s proprietary solution is a semi-supervised machine learning algorithm built on a range of large datasets. The company’s algorithm has been validated by leading academic institutions, as well as insurers and reinsurers across Europe, Asia and the US who are already actively using Qumata’s solution for underwriting.
Qumata boasts a track record of positive feasibility studies, conducted in the ‘proof of concept’ (POC) stage with major global insurance and reinsurance firms which are conducted prior to these organisations becoming clients. These POCs have shown the accuracy of underwriting is at least on par with the data emanating from traditional methods, while the speed, ease of use and efficiency provide significant improvements to the process. It is this speed which makes these data driven solutions really stand out.
Studies published in the past few months, including one from Munich
Re, show the average underwriting process for the ‘traditional’ method can take several days to process.
Even simplified methods, such as those sometimes adopted in the UK currently, require the longer questionnaires
to be completed at a later date after a quotation is given. In some markets like India, more than
50 per cent of consumers are asked to go for a medical exam which in turn creates further costs and inefficiencies
into the process.
With Qumata, the whole underwriting process can be reduced to under three minutes on average. The company’s API-based solution, once implemented into an insurer’s backend, allows for a new way of underwriting, making it faster, cheaper, and just as accurate. Insurers can use these solutions to provide a more seamless, modern customer digital experience and realise new revenue opportunities.
Such revenue opportunities include the ability for insurers to use this alternative data to flag and track circumstantial changes to individuals’ health and wellness activity. This
can lead to the identification of valuable new cross-sell opportunities with pre-approval to existing customers or offer an immediate price for new health or life insurance policies.
A further potential area of lead generation comes from insurers
expanding their digital partnerships with telecoms or banking firms. A partner platform can send data to Qumata who will create a risk profile which the insurer can use to pre-approve a price for a prospective customer and market to them.
For all these journeys, Qumata can also enable insurers to implement dynamic underwriting and improve conversion rates. After a set timeframe, Qumata can reassess the risk of a customer and adjust the price accordingly. Furthermore, Qumata can be used to augment traditional underwriting processes by allowing insurers to identify healthy applicants and provide them with further discounts, or higher sums assured.
In essence, Qumata embraces digital innovation to help streamline, simplify, augment and in some cases replace the traditional methods of life and health underwriting. Qumata seeks to propel digital innovation in the following ways:
<ul>
<li>The use of AI and data-based technology principles allowing the insurance ecosystem to modernise its underwriting business and its operations but at the same time providing a more positive experience for the buyer.</li>
<li>Develops new revenue opportunities for insurers and reinsurers and value-added services for the benefit of their policyholders, using consistent tracking of personalised alternative activity and wellness data sources.</li>
<li>Fosters a collaborative ecosystem where innovative service providers like Qumata, insurers, re-insurers and other partners can cooperate to bring about transformation of the underwriting process which in turn yield higher success rates in policy purchase. Digital innovation is key to accelerating and transforming the more traditional insurance business.</li>
</ul>
Insurtech is growing in terms of importance and digital technology providers like Qumata hold the keys to modernising traditional underwriting in the life and health insurance industry. The vision is to revolutionise
the future of underwriting and bring it forth into the
digital age.
<h4>About Qumata</h4>
Founded in 2017, Qumata (formerly known as HealthyHealth) is on a mission to transform insurance underwriting – offering a faster way to access individual health forecasts without losing accuracy of traditional questionnaires or medical exams. Our solutions unlocks insights into an individual’s current and future health and mortality risks, for anyone equipped with a smartphone, instantaneously and without medical questionnaires or examinations. We work with Life and Health insurers to help them create a faster, more customer-centric underwriting journey, providing the extra-mortality, extra-morbidity and other parameters for any individual and for 800 medical conditions.

Revolutionising Insurance with Data Innovation


**The firm looks to drive growth in UK and Asia with new funding, while participating global investors also include a number of those extending their initial involvement.**

**16 February 2022**, Qumata has publicly announced an extension to its Series A round of funding taking it up to US$23 million. This will help drive the company towards becoming a global leader in tech solutions as it continues to transform the insurance industry ecosystem with a disruptive machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) underwriting solution.

The latest funding is testament to the quality of Qumata’s solid growth plans for global expansion with the addition of a new key investor to the latest round. A number of the firms participating in this round are extending their initial involvement with Qumata, including continued investment by MMC Ventures. This demonstrates the confidence that these top tier international investors have in the management team, the strategic direction of the business and is in line with the digitalisation trend that is impacting the overall insurance industry.

Luca Schnettler, Co-founder, and CEO of Qumata said, “The range of existing and new investors is a fantastic endorsement of both our strategy and the global applicability of the solutions we provide to solve a need in the market. This extended funding will give us the ability to focus upon growth in both Asia and in the U.K. We have been expanding the team to support this and signing new partnerships in the region, such as the recently announced involvement with AIA Group, Asia’s largest pan-Asian Life Insurer.”

This extended funding announcement comes on the back of the firms signing an agreement recently with AIA Group Limited ([1299.HK](https://stock.us/stock/hk/01299)) to provide services across Asia. Qumata’s solutions support the acceleration of the digital transformation of the life and health insurance industry, with Asia being at the forefront of this change.


The firm looks to drive growth in UK and Asia with new funding, while participating global investors also include a number of those extending their initial involvement.
16 February 2022, Qumata has publicly announced an extension to its Series A round of funding taking it up to US$23 million. This will help drive the company towards becoming a global leader in tech solutions as it continues to transform the insurance industry ecosystem with a disruptive machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) underwriting solution.
The latest funding is testament to the quality of Qumata’s solid growth plans for global expansion with the addition of a new key investor to the latest round. A number of the firms participating in this round are extending their initial involvement with Qumata, including continued investment by MMC Ventures. This demonstrates the confidence that these top tier international investors have in the management team, the strategic direction of the business and is in line with the digitalisation trend that is impacting the overall insurance industry.
Luca Schnettler, Co-founder, and CEO of Qumata said, “The range of existing and new investors is a fantastic endorsement of both our strategy and the global applicability of the solutions we provide to solve a need in the market. This extended funding will give us the ability to focus upon growth in both Asia and in the U.K. We have been expanding the team to support this and signing new partnerships in the region, such as the recently announced involvement with AIA Group, Asia’s largest pan-Asian Life Insurer.”
This extended funding announcement comes on the back of the firms signing an agreement recently with AIA Group Limited (<a href="https://stock.us/stock/hk/01299">1299.HK</a>) to provide services across Asia. Qumata’s solutions support the acceleration of the digital transformation of the life and health insurance industry, with Asia being at the forefront of this change.

The firm looks to drive growth in UK and Asia with new funding, while participating global investors also include a number of those extending their initial involvement.

Qumata set for expansion with extension of Series A funding to US$23M and additional key investor


We are proud to announce that we have entered into an
agreement to provide our services to AIA Group Limited, the
largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group.
The agreement will enable AIA to incorporate Qumata’s ML/AI
underwriting solution in its markets across the region.

This marks a significant milestone in our Asia growth plans and
strengthens our position as a leading Insurtech player and trusted partner to insurance providers. The move also highlights how
digital technology is transforming insurance for the benefit of the
customer and the long-term sustainability of the industry.

We look forward to working together with AIA and supporting
their business in Asia.

Luca Schnettler, CEO and Co-founder of Qumata says: “The
agreement we have reached with AIA Group across Asia is a major
milestone in Qumata’s development in this region. We will play a
major role supporting the insurance industry in accelerating
digital transformation and digital underwriting using our
innovation solutions to the benefits of all parties. Qumata will play
a crucial role in these developments”.

You can download the full article from below link: [download the full article](/pdf/Quamata_AIA_press_statement.pdf)


We are proud to announce that we have entered into an
agreement to provide our services to AIA Group Limited, the
largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group.
The agreement will enable AIA to incorporate Qumata’s ML/AI
underwriting solution in its markets across the region.
This marks a significant milestone in our Asia growth plans and
strengthens our position as a leading Insurtech player and trusted partner to insurance providers. The move also highlights how
digital technology is transforming insurance for the benefit of the
customer and the long-term sustainability of the industry.
We look forward to working together with AIA and supporting
their business in Asia.
Luca Schnettler, CEO and Co-founder of Qumata says: “The
agreement we have reached with AIA Group across Asia is a major
milestone in Qumata’s development in this region. We will play a
major role supporting the insurance industry in accelerating
digital transformation and digital underwriting using our
innovation solutions to the benefits of all parties. Qumata will play
a crucial role in these developments”.
You can download the full article from below link: <a href="/pdf/Quamata_AIA_press_statement.pdf">download the full article</a>

Qumata announces a major pan-Asian partnership with AIA Group


Qumata is honoured to have been included in the Insurtech 100 listing. 2021. The INSURTECH100 is an annual list of 100 of the world’s most innovative InsurTech companies selected by a panel of industry experts and analysts following very strict criteria. These are the companies every leader in the insurance industry needs to know about as they consider and develop their digital transformation strategies.

Qumata’s profile in Insurtech 100 includes a case study of its partnership with SCOR which is particularly interesting as SCOR validated Qumata’s solution after running an in-depth trial and has gained enough confidence to now allow insurers to roll out Qumata’s underwriting system with the knowledge that SCOR will be willing to reinsure the risk.

Qumata (formerly known as Healthy Health) has offices in London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo & Singapore and is focused on transforming underwriting for life and health insurers, retaining the same level of accuracy, whilst improving customer experience and helping insurers realise new revenue opportunities. Qumata uses digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions, along with Extra Mortalities and Morbidities, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor.

The insurance industry is facing deep, structural, systemic challenges and undergoing profound changes resulting from digital innovation and transformation in all the components of the ecosystem: insurers, re-insurers and distribution.

The insurtech ecosystem benefits from a much more collaborative approach than other tech-driven sectors such as the fintech one. It strives, in collaboration between insurers/reinsurers and innovators, to modernise traditional processes that have for the most been unchanged for a very long time, such as underwriting.

The deep transformation resulting from digital innovation is pushing incumbent market players to reach out to the innovative agility of insurtech businesses whilst the latter need access to the insurers’ customer base, extended reach and financial strength. This facilitates a more collaborative and cooperative approach between the different parts of the ecosystem.

In this framework, data-based technologies and the new business models that use them are opening the door to mutually beneficial partnerships among major insurers, reinsurers and insurtech businesses. These partnerships allow all parties to adapt better to new customer demands and behaviours and are transforming underwriting in insurance. They make insurers and reinsurers more efficient and faster which in turn improves their reputation with their customers. Furthermore, they allow more immediate and streamlined underwriting and cater for cost reduction for market players.

As it is described in more detail in the case study published in the Insurtech 100 listing, one such example is the partnership that was struck up between Qumata and SCOR in 2021. Qumata is benefiting from SCOR’s expertise as an industry leader and SCOR is benefiting from Qumata’s innovative, tech-driven approach to underwriting life and health insurance.

SCOR is one of the world's largest reinsurers and provides its clients with a diversified and innovative range of solutions to control and manage risk. SCOR provides cutting-edge financial solutions, analytics tools and services in all areas related to risk, particularly in the Life & Health segment. As a leader in reinsurance with a priority in simplifying the customer journey through innovation, SCOR is an ideal new partner for Qumata, and their partnership could set a high standard for other similar partners within the Life & Health insurance and reinsurance ecosystem.

Qumata is proud to have been selected as one of the global Insurtech 100 and vindicated by the trust and validation of our data-driven, digital underwriting solutions by our reinsurance and insurance partners around the world.

The best is yet to come and Qumata's Insurtech100 selection is the shape of things to come!

You can download the full article from below link: [download the full article](/pdf/QumataxSCOR-InsurTech100.pdf)


Qumata is honoured to have been included in the Insurtech 100 listing. 2021. The INSURTECH100 is an annual list of 100 of the world’s most innovative InsurTech companies selected by a panel of industry experts and analysts following very strict criteria. These are the companies every leader in the insurance industry needs to know about as they consider and develop their digital transformation strategies.
Qumata’s profile in Insurtech 100 includes a case study of its partnership with SCOR which is particularly interesting as SCOR validated Qumata’s solution after running an in-depth trial and has gained enough confidence to now allow insurers to roll out Qumata’s underwriting system with the knowledge that SCOR will be willing to reinsure the risk.
Qumata (formerly known as Healthy Health) has offices in London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo &#x26; Singapore and is focused on transforming underwriting for life and health insurers, retaining the same level of accuracy, whilst improving customer experience and helping insurers realise new revenue opportunities. Qumata uses digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions, along with Extra Mortalities and Morbidities, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor.
The insurance industry is facing deep, structural, systemic challenges and undergoing profound changes resulting from digital innovation and transformation in all the components of the ecosystem: insurers, re-insurers and distribution.
The insurtech ecosystem benefits from a much more collaborative approach than other tech-driven sectors such as the fintech one. It strives, in collaboration between insurers/reinsurers and innovators, to modernise traditional processes that have for the most been unchanged for a very long time, such as underwriting.
The deep transformation resulting from digital innovation is pushing incumbent market players to reach out to the innovative agility of insurtech businesses whilst the latter need access to the insurers’ customer base, extended reach and financial strength. This facilitates a more collaborative and cooperative approach between the different parts of the ecosystem.
In this framework, data-based technologies and the new business models that use them are opening the door to mutually beneficial partnerships among major insurers, reinsurers and insurtech businesses. These partnerships allow all parties to adapt better to new customer demands and behaviours and are transforming underwriting in insurance. They make insurers and reinsurers more efficient and faster which in turn improves their reputation with their customers. Furthermore, they allow more immediate and streamlined underwriting and cater for cost reduction for market players.
As it is described in more detail in the case study published in the Insurtech 100 listing, one such example is the partnership that was struck up between Qumata and SCOR in 2021. Qumata is benefiting from SCOR’s expertise as an industry leader and SCOR is benefiting from Qumata’s innovative, tech-driven approach to underwriting life and health insurance.
SCOR is one of the world's largest reinsurers and provides its clients with a diversified and innovative range of solutions to control and manage risk. SCOR provides cutting-edge financial solutions, analytics tools and services in all areas related to risk, particularly in the Life &#x26; Health segment. As a leader in reinsurance with a priority in simplifying the customer journey through innovation, SCOR is an ideal new partner for Qumata, and their partnership could set a high standard for other similar partners within the Life &#x26; Health insurance and reinsurance ecosystem.
Qumata is proud to have been selected as one of the global Insurtech 100 and vindicated by the trust and validation of our data-driven, digital underwriting solutions by our reinsurance and insurance partners around the world.
The best is yet to come and Qumata's Insurtech100 selection is the shape of things to come!
You can download the full article from below link: <a href="/pdf/QumataxSCOR-InsurTech100.pdf">download the full article</a>

Qumata distinguished as one of the global Insurtech 100; highlights SCOR validation

HealthyHealth closes $10m Series A funding round led by MMC Ventures and announces renaming to Qumata

Investment will be focused on driving international growth and accelerating product development, to capitalise on growing market demand

2 June 2021, London - Qumata Group, a company focused on transforming the life and health insurance underwriting journey through digital data, has announced the closing of a $10m series A financing round, led by MMC Ventures. Joining MMC Ventures are AdirVentures and a number of other family offices, as well as existing investors including TMT Investments PLC.

The new funding will help accelerate global expansion of the current offering, after launching the product commercially with multiple large, listed insurers in Europe, Asia Pacific, the UK and North America. As part of this growth journey, the business is also transitioning to a new brand, Qumata. 

Qumata is well positioned to become the market standard in the underwriting field. With increasing levels of data available about individual health and wellbeing through mobile devices and wearables, there is a rich universe of insight that insurers can gain on the lifestyle and health of applicants, enabling the latter an easier and more convenient buying process. 
 
Qumata’s API solution is integrated by insurance companies across multiple distribution channels, ranging from tied agents to independent intermediaries and online channels. This unique solution allows life and health insurance applicants to share their digital health data instead of having to complete time-consuming questionnaires or invasive medical exams. Once consent is provided by the applicant, their data is analysed to predict applicants’ risk of developing medical conditions classified among hundreds, and to assess ‘extra-mortality’ and ‘extra-morbidity’ risks typically rated by insurers to derive their commercial premiums. This simple, innovative API solution can replace traditional questionnaires, with demonstrated advantages for insurers, which can experience higher conversion rates, more accurate risk selection as well as cheaper and automated underwriting.

The underwriting landscape for life and health is rapidly changing, with consumers expecting a more seamless and less intrusive approach. McKinsey’s recent report ‘Digital disruption in insurance: Cutting through the noise’, underlines the importance of insurance companies investing in digital technologies to optimise customer experience. 

“Insurers are increasingly embracing digital innovation, but there is still significant opportunity for further optimisation, particularly in the underwriting process. Our customers are already seeing significant benefits in using our technology to transform the traditional underwriting journey, and benefiting from higher conversion rates and improved underwriting outcomes,” comments Luca Schnettler, Group CEO at Qumata, “We are also excited to announce our new brand. Since our founding in 2017, the business has evolved and built a strong presence in the insurance world. As Qumata, we are enabling insurers to unlock the wealth of human data in mobile devices and wearables - safely, securely and with full customer consent.” 

“Qumata is well placed to bring much needed transformation to traditional life and health insurance underwriting, with a genuinely innovative data science led solution that is unique in the market.” adds Oliver Richards, Partner at MMC Ventures, “With a proven technology platform, a strong leadership team in place and ambitious plans for international growth, we are delighted to be part of this exciting journey.”

Current board members Luca Schnettler, Etienne Bourdon, Qumata COO and Richard di Benedetto, President at Aetna International, are now joined by Oliver Richards, Partner at MMC Ventures and Barry Karfunkel, previously CEO at Nasdaq-listed National General Insurance and after its $4bn sale to Allstate, and now Founder of AdirVentures. 


**About Qumata:**
We are building a new Standard for Life and Health Insurance Underwriting. We use digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions, along with Extra Mortalities and Morbidities, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor. For more information, visit www.qumata.com.

**Media Enquiries:**
 
Stuart Hobbs
 
Head of Marketing, Qumata
 
E: stuart@qumata.com

HealthyHealth closes $10m Series A funding round led by MMC Ventures and announces renaming to Qumata
Investment will be focused on driving international growth and accelerating product development, to capitalise on growing market demand
2 June 2021, London - Qumata Group, a company focused on transforming the life and health insurance underwriting journey through digital data, has announced the closing of a $10m series A financing round, led by MMC Ventures. Joining MMC Ventures are AdirVentures and a number of other family offices, as well as existing investors including TMT Investments PLC.
The new funding will help accelerate global expansion of the current offering, after launching the product commercially with multiple large, listed insurers in Europe, Asia Pacific, the UK and North America. As part of this growth journey, the business is also transitioning to a new brand, Qumata.
Qumata is well positioned to become the market standard in the underwriting field. With increasing levels of data available about individual health and wellbeing through mobile devices and wearables, there is a rich universe of insight that insurers can gain on the lifestyle and health of applicants, enabling the latter an easier and more convenient buying process.
Qumata’s API solution is integrated by insurance companies across multiple distribution channels, ranging from tied agents to independent intermediaries and online channels. This unique solution allows life and health insurance applicants to share their digital health data instead of having to complete time-consuming questionnaires or invasive medical exams. Once consent is provided by the applicant, their data is analysed to predict applicants’ risk of developing medical conditions classified among hundreds, and to assess ‘extra-mortality’ and ‘extra-morbidity’ risks typically rated by insurers to derive their commercial premiums. This simple, innovative API solution can replace traditional questionnaires, with demonstrated advantages for insurers, which can experience higher conversion rates, more accurate risk selection as well as cheaper and automated underwriting.
The underwriting landscape for life and health is rapidly changing, with consumers expecting a more seamless and less intrusive approach. McKinsey’s recent report ‘Digital disruption in insurance: Cutting through the noise’, underlines the importance of insurance companies investing in digital technologies to optimise customer experience.
“Insurers are increasingly embracing digital innovation, but there is still significant opportunity for further optimisation, particularly in the underwriting process. Our customers are already seeing significant benefits in using our technology to transform the traditional underwriting journey, and benefiting from higher conversion rates and improved underwriting outcomes,” comments Luca Schnettler, Group CEO at Qumata, “We are also excited to announce our new brand. Since our founding in 2017, the business has evolved and built a strong presence in the insurance world. As Qumata, we are enabling insurers to unlock the wealth of human data in mobile devices and wearables - safely, securely and with full customer consent.”
“Qumata is well placed to bring much needed transformation to traditional life and health insurance underwriting, with a genuinely innovative data science led solution that is unique in the market.” adds Oliver Richards, Partner at MMC Ventures, “With a proven technology platform, a strong leadership team in place and ambitious plans for international growth, we are delighted to be part of this exciting journey.”
Current board members Luca Schnettler, Etienne Bourdon, Qumata COO and Richard di Benedetto, President at Aetna International, are now joined by Oliver Richards, Partner at MMC Ventures and Barry Karfunkel, previously CEO at Nasdaq-listed National General Insurance and after its $4bn sale to Allstate, and now Founder of AdirVentures.
About Qumata:
We are building a new Standard for Life and Health Insurance Underwriting. We use digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions, along with Extra Mortalities and Morbidities, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor. For more information, visit www.qumata.com.
Media Enquiries:

Stuart Hobbs

Head of Marketing, Qumata

E: stuart@qumata.com

HealthyHealth closes $10m Series A funding round led by MMC Ventures and announces renaming to Qumata

Series A Funding Announcement


Transforming the underwriting journey: SCOR and Qumata to collaborate on digital health data underwriting solutions 

SCOR and Qumata Group, a company focused on the speed, accuracy, and cost of digital Life and Health underwriting, are partnering to build the future of the digital underwriting process by designing products and solutions that use digital health data to provide instant underwriting decisions to customers.

Leveraging SCOR’s underwriting and risk expertise and v’s proven technology, this partnership brings innovative solutions to SCOR’s insurer clients, enabling them to make more rapid, data-driven, approval decisions. In line with SCOR’s goal of protecting people and societies through the expansion of Life insurance coverage, this partnership will help insurers transform their underwriting processes, freeing up time for them to support clients with more complicated backgrounds, and to do so with enhanced information.

Transforming data into knowledge, Qumata’s solution analyses health data from smartphones and wearables, shared with insurers by Life insurance applicants, to predict applicants’ risk of developing critical medical conditions and to assess ‘extra-mortality’ and ‘extra-morbidity’ risks. With insurers embracing digital innovation, Qumata’s technology further optimizes, and may ultimately replace, the traditional underwriting journey. Across several regions, insurers are already seeing the benefits of shortening medical questionnaires and adopting fluidless underwriting protocols, enjoying valuable gains in time, lower costs, higher conversion rates, and better underwriting outcomes.

This collaboration will be rolled out worldwide, and SCOR looks forward to deepening its work with Qumata to bring this solution to more markets and consumers around the world.

“This is an exciting time in the evolution of Life & Health insurance underwriting, and we believe there are tangible benefits for customers in this trend of using digital health records to transform the underwriting journey,” adds Gavin Maguire, Head of Innovation at SCOR Global Life UK & Ireland, who views this as a great opportunity to develop the Life and Health insurance products of the future. Qumata has developed a slick end-to-end process that is intuitive and easy, leading to quicker underwriting decisions that is beneficial and important to our clients.”

"We are excited to work with SCOR on revolutionizing the way insurers underwrite,” adds Luca Schnettler, Group CEO at Qumata. "SCOR’s backing as a globally respected and leading reinsurer will help us, together, to move towards a more cost effective, frictionless customer journey.”

About SCOR:

SCOR, the world’s fourth largest reinsurer, offers its clients a diversified and innovative range of solutions and services to control and manage risk. Applying “The Art & Science of Risk”, SCOR uses its industry-recognized expertise and cutting-edge financial solutions to serve its clients and contribute to the welfare and resilience of society.

SCOR offers its clients an optimal level of security with its AA- rating or equivalent from S&P, Moody’s, Fitch and AM Best. The Group generated premiums of more than EUR 16 billion in 2020, and serves clients in more than 160 countries from its 36 offices worldwide. For more information, visit: [www.scor.com](https://www.scor.com)

About Qumata:

Qumata is building a new Standard for Life and Health Insurance Underwriting. We use digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions, along with Extra Mortalities and Morbidities, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor. For more information, visit [www.qumata.com](https://www.qumata.com). 

Transforming the underwriting journey: SCOR and Qumata to collaborate on digital health data underwriting solutions
SCOR and Qumata Group, a company focused on the speed, accuracy, and cost of digital Life and Health underwriting, are partnering to build the future of the digital underwriting process by designing products and solutions that use digital health data to provide instant underwriting decisions to customers.
Leveraging SCOR’s underwriting and risk expertise and v’s proven technology, this partnership brings innovative solutions to SCOR’s insurer clients, enabling them to make more rapid, data-driven, approval decisions. In line with SCOR’s goal of protecting people and societies through the expansion of Life insurance coverage, this partnership will help insurers transform their underwriting processes, freeing up time for them to support clients with more complicated backgrounds, and to do so with enhanced information.
Transforming data into knowledge, Qumata’s solution analyses health data from smartphones and wearables, shared with insurers by Life insurance applicants, to predict applicants’ risk of developing critical medical conditions and to assess ‘extra-mortality’ and ‘extra-morbidity’ risks. With insurers embracing digital innovation, Qumata’s technology further optimizes, and may ultimately replace, the traditional underwriting journey. Across several regions, insurers are already seeing the benefits of shortening medical questionnaires and adopting fluidless underwriting protocols, enjoying valuable gains in time, lower costs, higher conversion rates, and better underwriting outcomes.
This collaboration will be rolled out worldwide, and SCOR looks forward to deepening its work with Qumata to bring this solution to more markets and consumers around the world.
“This is an exciting time in the evolution of Life &#x26; Health insurance underwriting, and we believe there are tangible benefits for customers in this trend of using digital health records to transform the underwriting journey,” adds Gavin Maguire, Head of Innovation at SCOR Global Life UK &#x26; Ireland, who views this as a great opportunity to develop the Life and Health insurance products of the future. Qumata has developed a slick end-to-end process that is intuitive and easy, leading to quicker underwriting decisions that is beneficial and important to our clients.”
"We are excited to work with SCOR on revolutionizing the way insurers underwrite,” adds Luca Schnettler, Group CEO at Qumata. "SCOR’s backing as a globally respected and leading reinsurer will help us, together, to move towards a more cost effective, frictionless customer journey.”
About SCOR:
SCOR, the world’s fourth largest reinsurer, offers its clients a diversified and innovative range of solutions and services to control and manage risk. Applying “The Art &#x26; Science of Risk”, SCOR uses its industry-recognized expertise and cutting-edge financial solutions to serve its clients and contribute to the welfare and resilience of society.
SCOR offers its clients an optimal level of security with its AA- rating or equivalent from S&#x26;P, Moody’s, Fitch and AM Best. The Group generated premiums of more than EUR 16 billion in 2020, and serves clients in more than 160 countries from its 36 offices worldwide. For more information, visit: <a href="https://www.scor.com">www.scor.com</a>
About Qumata:
Qumata is building a new Standard for Life and Health Insurance Underwriting. We use digital data to calculate the risk of diagnosis for over 800 conditions, along with Extra Mortalities and Morbidities, saving applicants hours filling out long questionnaires or visiting the doctor. For more information, visit <a href="https://www.qumata.com">www.qumata.com</a>.

Transforming the underwriting journey: SCOR and Qumata to collaborate on digital health data underwriting solutions

Qumata & SCOR: Transforming the underwriting journey

We became first time parents in March this year. It was the height of the pandemic in the UK with strict lockdown rules. Working-from-home became a blessing in disguise allowing us to experience this special time together as a family.

However the experience has recalibrated my risk perception. Every time I step out I am acutely aware of the risks we all face every day. I am equally aware that it is not just the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus but hundreds of others. Our health and lives are as fragile as they are robust and we all deserve a safety net for ourselves and for those we love and care about.

According to the Association of British Insurers (ABI) around 1m UK adults were unable to work because of serious injury or illness in 2017 and the protection gap continues to rise reaching an estimated £2.5 trillion in 2012. This problem is not unique to the UK. SwissRe estimated the US mortality protection gap at \$25 trillion in 2016 and the trend is similar in other advanced economies while emerging economies fare even worse. Here are our review of the top 5 challenges in bridging the protection gap:

##### 1. Cost:

<img src="/img/blog/expensive-insurance-sign-wo.jpg" alt="expensive-insurance-sign-wo" className="img" />

The cost (or perception thereof) of getting insurance features regularly as one of the top challenges. For long insurers have focused on affluent customers. This has shaped product design, risk classification and pricing, distribution, communication and operations. Most products (often bundled together) are confusing to most customers. Pricing is very uncompetitive because of the [inability of existing predictive models to differentiate risk](https://www.soa.org/news-and-publications/newsletters/newsdirect/2015/may/ndn-2015-iss70/innovation-and-the-protection-gap/). Most of the loading is still based predominantly on Age, BMI and smoking status. At the same time most of the distribution is still via agents and brokers. This channel is, understandably, too costly to cater to lower ‘sums assured’ leaving out large parts of society. Similarly operations are manual and tedious, most importantly in assessing risk. Armies of underwriting teams are under increasing pressure to the workload consisting [of thousands of pages of applications per day](https://www.genre.com/knowledge/publications/iinalh1910-en.html). Emerging d2c business models are the step in the right direction but, unable to overcome traditional structures, have had limited success so far.

##### 2. Purchase Experience:

<img src="/img/blog/5-tips-for-communicating-with-unhappy-customers.jpg" alt="5-tips-for-communicating-with-unhappy-customers" className="img" />

This is a no brainer. According to TransUnion, in the US, average time from application submission to policy issuance is [27 days](https://www.transunion.ca/blog/global-life-insurance-market#:~:text=In%20the%20US%2C%20the%20average,the%20level%20of%20underwriting%20required) with most developed markets ranging between 3-5 weeks. On top of this the customer needs to divulge personal and highly sensitive information about their occupation, medical history, family medical history, pre-existing conditions, lifestyle, smoking and alcohol consumption, dangerous pursuits and on and on and on. Most of us don’t have this information on hand and all of us are scared to get it wrong as nobody wants to pay a premium for years only to find out that your claim is invalidated because of a discrepancy in your application. For a significant proportion of customers the ordeal doesn’t end there and after revealing all the required information they still have to get a medical exam or blood test conducted. The result is that insurance has one of the [worst application abandonment rates](https://www.salecycle.com/blog/featured/online-financial-services-key-stats-trends/), further shrinking the total addressable market.

##### 3. Education and Language:

<img src="/img/blog/simple.jpg" alt="simple" className="img" />

This draws from the first two problems. Complicated products and lengthy procedures obfuscates the value proposition. This is compounded by medical jargon and the questions of what is covered and what is not. On top of this we include our own lexicon of technical terms e.g. in a recent survey by Legal and General in the UK [less than 1 in 10 respondents associated the word ‘protection’ with insurance](https://www.ftadviser.com/opinion/2019/06/06/change-the-language-to-close-the-protection-gap/). Finally the language and communication seems to pit the insurer against the applicant where information asymmetry creates doubts and mistrust.

##### 4. Agency and Engagement:

<img src="/img/blog/Employee-empowerment.jpg" alt="Employee-empowerment" className="img" />

The variables used to assess health risks are historic and generally unchangeable. They neither empower nor encourage the individual to improve their ‘state of being’. While insurers would love for the insured to eat healthy, be more active and aware, they don’t provide any incentives for doing so. There’s rising literature that mobility and activity are much better predictors of mental and physical health. These are also variables over which individuals have agency and control. We live in an age where almost all of us have a plethora of digital data on us all the time. Insurers need to leverage this data to improve risk predictions and promote healthier lives.

##### 5. The Present Bias:

<img src="/img/blog/carpe-diem-motivational-icon-vector.jpg" alt="carpe-diem-motivational-icon-vector" className="img" />

We increasingly live in the moment and increasingly celebrate it. Throw caution to the wind, carpe diem and all that. Financially speaking, record low interest rates makes it much cheaper to discount the future rather than save for it. This is not a problem insurance can solve alone but reducing the costs, improving access, communicating clearly and aligning incentives for healthier outcomes can make a significant difference.

##### Conclusion:

We have a transformative approach to overcome these challenges. It is built on enabling customers to share powerful health indicators digitally and instantly. Trained on comprehensive, longitudinal datasets our algorithm predicts the likelihood of hundreds of medical conditions and calculates extra morbidity and extra mortality risk on a continuous scale. Allowing for an easy and quick purchase, better and more granular risk classification and inexpensive and seamless delivery model.

Get in touch to find out how we are working with insurers and reinsurers to help provide the safety net that we all deserve.

We became first time parents in March this year. It was the height of the pandemic in the UK with strict lockdown rules. Working-from-home became a blessing in disguise allowing us to experience this special time together as a family.
However the experience has recalibrated my risk perception. Every time I step out I am acutely aware of the risks we all face every day. I am equally aware that it is not just the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus but hundreds of others. Our health and lives are as fragile as they are robust and we all deserve a safety net for ourselves and for those we love and care about.
According to the Association of British Insurers (ABI) around 1m UK adults were unable to work because of serious injury or illness in 2017 and the protection gap continues to rise reaching an estimated £2.5 trillion in 2012. This problem is not unique to the UK. SwissRe estimated the US mortality protection gap at $25 trillion in 2016 and the trend is similar in other advanced economies while emerging economies fare even worse. Here are our review of the top 5 challenges in bridging the protection gap:
<h5>1. Cost:</h5>
The cost (or perception thereof) of getting insurance features regularly as one of the top challenges. For long insurers have focused on affluent customers. This has shaped product design, risk classification and pricing, distribution, communication and operations. Most products (often bundled together) are confusing to most customers. Pricing is very uncompetitive because of the <a href="https://www.soa.org/news-and-publications/newsletters/newsdirect/2015/may/ndn-2015-iss70/innovation-and-the-protection-gap/">inability of existing predictive models to differentiate risk</a>. Most of the loading is still based predominantly on Age, BMI and smoking status. At the same time most of the distribution is still via agents and brokers. This channel is, understandably, too costly to cater to lower ‘sums assured’ leaving out large parts of society. Similarly operations are manual and tedious, most importantly in assessing risk. Armies of underwriting teams are under increasing pressure to the workload consisting <a href="https://www.genre.com/knowledge/publications/iinalh1910-en.html">of thousands of pages of applications per day</a>. Emerging d2c business models are the step in the right direction but, unable to overcome traditional structures, have had limited success so far.
<h5>2. Purchase Experience:</h5>
This is a no brainer. According to TransUnion, in the US, average time from application submission to policy issuance is <a href="https://www.transunion.ca/blog/global-life-insurance-market#:~:text=In%20the%20US%2C%20the%20average,the%20level%20of%20underwriting%20required">27 days</a> with most developed markets ranging between 3-5 weeks. On top of this the customer needs to divulge personal and highly sensitive information about their occupation, medical history, family medical history, pre-existing conditions, lifestyle, smoking and alcohol consumption, dangerous pursuits and on and on and on. Most of us don’t have this information on hand and all of us are scared to get it wrong as nobody wants to pay a premium for years only to find out that your claim is invalidated because of a discrepancy in your application. For a significant proportion of customers the ordeal doesn’t end there and after revealing all the required information they still have to get a medical exam or blood test conducted. The result is that insurance has one of the <a href="https://www.salecycle.com/blog/featured/online-financial-services-key-stats-trends/">worst application abandonment rates</a>, further shrinking the total addressable market.
<h5>3. Education and Language:</h5>
This draws from the first two problems. Complicated products and lengthy procedures obfuscates the value proposition. This is compounded by medical jargon and the questions of what is covered and what is not. On top of this we include our own lexicon of technical terms e.g. in a recent survey by Legal and General in the UK <a href="https://www.ftadviser.com/opinion/2019/06/06/change-the-language-to-close-the-protection-gap/">less than 1 in 10 respondents associated the word ‘protection’ with insurance</a>. Finally the language and communication seems to pit the insurer against the applicant where information asymmetry creates doubts and mistrust.
<h5>4. Agency and Engagement:</h5>
The variables used to assess health risks are historic and generally unchangeable. They neither empower nor encourage the individual to improve their ‘state of being’. While insurers would love for the insured to eat healthy, be more active and aware, they don’t provide any incentives for doing so. There’s rising literature that mobility and activity are much better predictors of mental and physical health. These are also variables over which individuals have agency and control. We live in an age where almost all of us have a plethora of digital data on us all the time. Insurers need to leverage this data to improve risk predictions and promote healthier lives.
<h5>5. The Present Bias:</h5>
We increasingly live in the moment and increasingly celebrate it. Throw caution to the wind, carpe diem and all that. Financially speaking, record low interest rates makes it much cheaper to discount the future rather than save for it. This is not a problem insurance can solve alone but reducing the costs, improving access, communicating clearly and aligning incentives for healthier outcomes can make a significant difference.
<h5>Conclusion:</h5>
We have a transformative approach to overcome these challenges. It is built on enabling customers to share powerful health indicators digitally and instantly. Trained on comprehensive, longitudinal datasets our algorithm predicts the likelihood of hundreds of medical conditions and calculates extra morbidity and extra mortality risk on a continuous scale. Allowing for an easy and quick purchase, better and more granular risk classification and inexpensive and seamless delivery model.
Get in touch to find out how we are working with insurers and reinsurers to help provide the safety net that we all deserve.

Top 5 Challenges in Bridging the Protection Gap

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on how we live, work and interact will play out in years to come. However, naturally, the focus is on solving problems and seizing opportunities that arise in the short to medium term.

Executives in major companies are more focused on seizing emerging opportunities than ever before. Recently [McKenzie](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/innovation-in-a-crisis-why-it-is-more-critical-than-ever#) published its survey on how innovation is more critical than ever. While a predominant majority agree with the criticality, very few feel confident facing these challenges:

<img src="/img/blog/McKinsey Stats - INnovating in a Crisis.png" alt="McKinsey Stats - INnovating in a Crisis" className="img" />

#### Age-old weaknesses exposed

Similar sentiments are prevalent with life and health insurers. For years carriers have known the key areas of weakness - [balancing diligent risk assessments with improving customer experience](https://www.healthyhealth.com/post/how-to-judge-risk-with-less-risk). SwissRe highlighting the [massive protection gap in the US](https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/topics-and-risk-dialogues/economy-and-insurance-outlook/Bridging-the-US-mortality-protection-gap.html) recommended focusing on (i) customer experience, (ii) behavioural economics and (iii) automated underwriting.

<img src="/img/blog/Three pillars.png" alt="Three pillars" className="img" />

Encapsulated within this is also the drive by insurance companies to redefine themselves from protectors to health partners. Engaging customers with health advice and rewarding healthy behaviours increase customer loyalty and reduce losses over the long-term.

#### Along came Covid-19

The pandemic transformed these priorities from strategic objectives to survival needs. When face-to-face meetings got suspended and medical exams could not be conducted, carriers rushed to alternative solutions. Most popular initiatives involved telescreening, EMRs and alternative data sources.

For a lot of the insurers it was the first time in decades that they contemplated changing medical underwriting approach and hence, predictably, a lot of these efforts did not have great results. However the negative inertia is reversed and newer iterations are making headway.

Similarly the importance of personal responsibility for individual and societal health makes it ever more imperative to engage and empower individuals. Incentive alignment between the insurer and the insured leads to win-win scenarios if value proposition design is customer-centric. Customer expectations have also caught up and now demand: ‘help me, help you’.

Our approach is based on individual behaviour and digital health data that removes the complexities, inconveniences and inconsistencies in health risk assessment.

#### Conclusion

A lot of us have been ruing missing out on opportunities resulting from changing lifestyles. I wish I had invested in: video conferencing, video streaming, gaming, hygiene products, (the right) pharma companies, protection insurance, sports gear and wearable technology. The list goes on and on.

The McKenzie survey shows that the urge is great and so is self-awareness. Socio-economic impacts will be transformative. There are many emerging opportunities backed by emerging technologies that will unlock markets and fuel future growth. Timing and execution will differentiate success but this time don’t expect the usual suspects to come up with all the answers alone.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on how we live, work and interact will play out in years to come. However, naturally, the focus is on solving problems and seizing opportunities that arise in the short to medium term.
Executives in major companies are more focused on seizing emerging opportunities than ever before. Recently <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/innovation-in-a-crisis-why-it-is-more-critical-than-ever#">McKenzie</a> published its survey on how innovation is more critical than ever. While a predominant majority agree with the criticality, very few feel confident facing these challenges:
<h4>Age-old weaknesses exposed</h4>
Similar sentiments are prevalent with life and health insurers. For years carriers have known the key areas of weakness - <a href="https://www.healthyhealth.com/post/how-to-judge-risk-with-less-risk">balancing diligent risk assessments with improving customer experience</a>. SwissRe highlighting the <a href="https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/topics-and-risk-dialogues/economy-and-insurance-outlook/Bridging-the-US-mortality-protection-gap.html">massive protection gap in the US</a> recommended focusing on (i) customer experience, (ii) behavioural economics and (iii) automated underwriting.
Encapsulated within this is also the drive by insurance companies to redefine themselves from protectors to health partners. Engaging customers with health advice and rewarding healthy behaviours increase customer loyalty and reduce losses over the long-term.
<h4>Along came Covid-19</h4>
The pandemic transformed these priorities from strategic objectives to survival needs. When face-to-face meetings got suspended and medical exams could not be conducted, carriers rushed to alternative solutions. Most popular initiatives involved telescreening, EMRs and alternative data sources.
For a lot of the insurers it was the first time in decades that they contemplated changing medical underwriting approach and hence, predictably, a lot of these efforts did not have great results. However the negative inertia is reversed and newer iterations are making headway.
Similarly the importance of personal responsibility for individual and societal health makes it ever more imperative to engage and empower individuals. Incentive alignment between the insurer and the insured leads to win-win scenarios if value proposition design is customer-centric. Customer expectations have also caught up and now demand: ‘help me, help you’.
Our approach is based on individual behaviour and digital health data that removes the complexities, inconveniences and inconsistencies in health risk assessment.
<h4>Conclusion</h4>
A lot of us have been ruing missing out on opportunities resulting from changing lifestyles. I wish I had invested in: video conferencing, video streaming, gaming, hygiene products, (the right) pharma companies, protection insurance, sports gear and wearable technology. The list goes on and on.
The McKenzie survey shows that the urge is great and so is self-awareness. Socio-economic impacts will be transformative. There are many emerging opportunities backed by emerging technologies that will unlock markets and fuel future growth. Timing and execution will differentiate success but this time don’t expect the usual suspects to come up with all the answers alone.

Innovating for Survival - Life and Health Insurance

We are living through unprecedented times. Some of us are adjusting and adapting but many lives have changed drastically.

In our industry - life and health insurance - disruption was inevitable. We are all aware now that there is only a slight impact from increased losses as mortality rates remain within loss thresholds. The big impact will come from [disruption in financial markets eroding investment returns](http://www.actuarialpost.co.uk/downloads/cat_1/MorningStar%20Coronavirus%20Life%202020.pdf) but at the same time it will probably drive sales as people feel a lot more vulnerable.

This will put further pressure on insurers to increase their reach and improve the customer buying experience - especially health risk assessments. Due to social restrictions, in the short run, optimising the online direct-to-customer channel is an absolute necessity. However, until health assessments rely on tons of personal and health questions and medical exams customers will continue to drop out..

Today most insurers use mortality tables developed in the late part of the 20th century, historical trends and risk groupings (age, gender, occupation, family history) to predict health and mortality outcomes for pricing protection products. The amount of information required and the constant back-and-forth for clarifications and exceptions results in a customer journey spanning weeks on average.

Diminishing Predictive Ability

The basic (age, gender) models achieve accuracy, measured by area-under-the-curve (AUC) of around [~ 80%](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4951106/). Some additional variables assessed do have high correlations with mortality but over time they have exhausted their ability to differentiate beyond broad classification buckets.

There’s plenty of research examining this challenge. One multi-country study published in [PLOS](https://plos.org/) measured improvement in accuracy for 57 predictors. Contributions of the top predictors are as follows:

<img src="/img/blog/us diagram.png" alt="US graf" className="img" />
<img src="/img/blog/promo8.png" alt="England graf" className="img" />

Other than ‘smoking status’ none of the other predictors are assessed under traditional underwriting, either due to lack of data availability or regulatory restrictions resulting in most of the loading weightage derived from Age and BMI.

Personal Responsibility and Individual Agency

Another problem with the traditional approach is that it doesn’t reward improvements in health. It doesn’t acknowledge customer’s agency to improve their wellbeing. Exercise and mobility reduce risk of major health conditions and mortality and enhance immunity to emerging risks.

What’s relevant here is that, other than better risk selection and customer experience, for a long time insurance companies have known, that higher returns lie in prevention and health improvements of the customers. At a time when sense of personal responsibility will define national health outcomes across countries there is a big opportunity for insurers to incentivise behaviour and empower individuals to build healthier and more resilient societies.

Conclusion

Better risk classification and pricing differentiation are proven strategies to increase sales and margins. These also pose threats as challengers, free from legacy, are rebuilding predictive models for the future. For example, along with using the most significant predictors our algorithm is trained on real-life data sets of highly representative populations which allows us to translate risk scores to extra-morbidity and extra-mortality risks for the target markets.

The disruption brought about by the virus outbreak has prioritised remote engagement, digital risk assessment and emerging data sources as agent/broker channels are suspended and medical exams cannot be conducted. Ability to overcome these challenges in the short-term and realigning the value proposition for the future will result in the biggest wins and losses.

References:

Actuarial Post

PLOS

Harvard Health

McKinsey

We are living through unprecedented times. Some of us are adjusting and adapting but many lives have changed drastically.
In our industry - life and health insurance - disruption was inevitable. We are all aware now that there is only a slight impact from increased losses as mortality rates remain within loss thresholds. The big impact will come from <a href="http://www.actuarialpost.co.uk/downloads/cat_1/MorningStar%20Coronavirus%20Life%202020.pdf">disruption in financial markets eroding investment returns</a> but at the same time it will probably drive sales as people feel a lot more vulnerable.
This will put further pressure on insurers to increase their reach and improve the customer buying experience - especially health risk assessments. Due to social restrictions, in the short run, optimising the online direct-to-customer channel is an absolute necessity. However, until health assessments rely on tons of personal and health questions and medical exams customers will continue to drop out..
Today most insurers use mortality tables developed in the late part of the 20th century, historical trends and risk groupings (age, gender, occupation, family history) to predict health and mortality outcomes for pricing protection products. The amount of information required and the constant back-and-forth for clarifications and exceptions results in a customer journey spanning weeks on average.
Diminishing Predictive Ability
The basic (age, gender) models achieve accuracy, measured by area-under-the-curve (AUC) of around <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4951106/">~ 80%</a>. Some additional variables assessed do have high correlations with mortality but over time they have exhausted their ability to differentiate beyond broad classification buckets.
There’s plenty of research examining this challenge. One multi-country study published in <a href="https://plos.org/">PLOS</a> measured improvement in accuracy for 57 predictors. Contributions of the top predictors are as follows:
Other than ‘smoking status’ none of the other predictors are assessed under traditional underwriting, either due to lack of data availability or regulatory restrictions resulting in most of the loading weightage derived from Age and BMI.
Personal Responsibility and Individual Agency
Another problem with the traditional approach is that it doesn’t reward improvements in health. It doesn’t acknowledge customer’s agency to improve their wellbeing. Exercise and mobility reduce risk of major health conditions and mortality and enhance immunity to emerging risks.
What’s relevant here is that, other than better risk selection and customer experience, for a long time insurance companies have known, that higher returns lie in prevention and health improvements of the customers. At a time when sense of personal responsibility will define national health outcomes across countries there is a big opportunity for insurers to incentivise behaviour and empower individuals to build healthier and more resilient societies.
Conclusion
Better risk classification and pricing differentiation are proven strategies to increase sales and margins. These also pose threats as challengers, free from legacy, are rebuilding predictive models for the future. For example, along with using the most significant predictors our algorithm is trained on real-life data sets of highly representative populations which allows us to translate risk scores to extra-morbidity and extra-mortality risks for the target markets.
The disruption brought about by the virus outbreak has prioritised remote engagement, digital risk assessment and emerging data sources as agent/broker channels are suspended and medical exams cannot be conducted. Ability to overcome these challenges in the short-term and realigning the value proposition for the future will result in the biggest wins and losses.
References:
Actuarial Post
PLOS
Harvard Health
McKinsey

Declining Predictive Power of Medical Underwriting

COVID-19 is a virus affecting countries all over the world and undoubtedly your timelines are flooded with information on ways to prevent the spread of and contracting the virus. We will not repeat these facts and figures but do advise that you follow the guidelines from the relevant medical and government authorities.

Many countries have implemented varying levels of ‘social distancing’ measures and strict priority rules for masks, ventilators, tests and other essential materials that are in limited supply. All these interventions, however, do have quite different levels of impact.

Here we will take a look at the differences in mortality rates and the significant factors that will require the most attention.

## Mortality rates vary from country to country

The mortality rate is a direct result of several factors including the efficiency of the national healthcare system, the spread of the virus over time amongst the population, population demographic distributions(age-group) and the prevalence of pre-existing conditions within each age-group.

Today’s mortality rates are estimated to be around 4.6% for China, 1.2% for South Korea, 8.6% in Italy and 1% in the US. **(1)**

To give you an idea of the magnitude of these rates, looking at the US flu statistics, these mortality figures range between 12 to 24 times higher than the usual seasonal flu rates. **(2)**

Mortality rates are positively correlated to age

We looked at the mortality rate for COVID-19 in relation to age group to get some insight, and found the correlation between mortality and age for all countries in our analysis to be quite significant. Fatalities are seen to increase monotonically with age with most occurring in the 60+ years age-group. **(3)**

<img src="/img/blog/Graph-Covid by Age.png" alt="Graph-Covid by Age" className="img" />

## Mortality rates are aggravated by pre-existing conditions

In a recent study on the Italian COVID-19 cases **(4)**, 99% of their fatalities had pre-existing conditions, with high blood pressure reported in 76% of the cases.

<img src="/img/blog/Screenshot 2020-04-03 at 16.36.23.png" alt="Screenshot 2020-04-03 at 16.36.23" className="img" />

Cardiovascular conditions were the most commonly occurring and mental disorders the least, with 48.5% of fatalities having at least three pre-existing conditions **(4)**:

<img src="/img/blog/promo7.png" alt="promo7" className="img" />

In China, the following pre-existing conditions were identified as very high factors of vulnerability for individuals(5):

● Cardiovascular diseases

● Diabetes

● Chronic respiratory diseases

● Hypertension

● Cancer

Why Qumata is gathering this type of data?

Qumata specialises in evaluating the risk to be diagnosed for hundreds of medical conditions and the mortality likelihood for most medical conditions. Our model is based on wearable trackers, mobile phone data and national health statistics.

We must understand who are the most vulnerable individuals amongst us to suffer from COVID-19. This will allow us to prioritise the resources needed to limit the virus’ impact.

Qumata offers support for the community by tracking COVID-19’s fatality rates and related factors to help prevent any further fatalities.

What can you do to help?

If you would like to contribute towards our efforts and have read the latest studies, reports and information on COVID-19, please add more sources and reports in the comments below in order for us to keep up to date on this valuable information.

Sources

1 - Fatality per country: Report from Mc Kinsey Covid 19 Update 20 of March. Case Fatality calculated as ( total deaths) / (total cases) – this rate is evolving and dependent upon several factors, including number of suspected cases that are tested. For the US, WHO data is lagging news reports for the US; In the US, CDC & WHO reports.
[https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/risk/our%20insights/covid%2019%20implications%20for%20business/covid%2019%20march%2025/covid-19-facts-and-insights-march-25-v3.ashx)

2 - Comparison with the flu. " Case fatality rates: COVID-19 vs. US seasonal flu ". [https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#how-do-case-fatality-rates-from-covid-19-compare-to-those-of-the-seasonal-flu
](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#how-do-case-fatality-rates-from-covid-19-compare-to-those-of-the-seasonal-flu)

3 - Fatality per age group: Report from Mc Kinsey Covid 19 Update 20 of March. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/covid-19-implications-for-business

4 - Coronavirus: early-stage case fatality rates by underlying health condition in Italy. https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_17_marzo-v2.pdf

5 - Coronavirus: Case fatality rate of COVID-19 by preexisting health conditions.https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-preexisting-health-conditions

COVID-19 is a virus affecting countries all over the world and undoubtedly your timelines are flooded with information on ways to prevent the spread of and contracting the virus. We will not repeat these facts and figures but do advise that you follow the guidelines from the relevant medical and government authorities.
Many countries have implemented varying levels of ‘social distancing’ measures and strict priority rules for masks, ventilators, tests and other essential materials that are in limited supply. All these interventions, however, do have quite different levels of impact.
Here we will take a look at the differences in mortality rates and the significant factors that will require the most attention.
<h2>Mortality rates vary from country to country</h2>
The mortality rate is a direct result of several factors including the efficiency of the national healthcare system, the spread of the virus over time amongst the population, population demographic distributions(age-group) and the prevalence of pre-existing conditions within each age-group.
Today’s mortality rates are estimated to be around 4.6% for China, 1.2% for South Korea, 8.6% in Italy and 1% in the US. (1)
To give you an idea of the magnitude of these rates, looking at the US flu statistics, these mortality figures range between 12 to 24 times higher than the usual seasonal flu rates. (2)
Mortality rates are positively correlated to age
We looked at the mortality rate for COVID-19 in relation to age group to get some insight, and found the correlation between mortality and age for all countries in our analysis to be quite significant. Fatalities are seen to increase monotonically with age with most occurring in the 60+ years age-group. (3)
<h2>Mortality rates are aggravated by pre-existing conditions</h2>
In a recent study on the Italian COVID-19 cases (4), 99% of their fatalities had pre-existing conditions, with high blood pressure reported in 76% of the cases.
Cardiovascular conditions were the most commonly occurring and mental disorders the least, with 48.5% of fatalities having at least three pre-existing conditions (4):
In China, the following pre-existing conditions were identified as very high factors of vulnerability for individuals(5):
● Cardiovascular diseases
● Diabetes
● Chronic respiratory diseases
● Hypertension
● Cancer
Why Qumata is gathering this type of data?
Qumata specialises in evaluating the risk to be diagnosed for hundreds of medical conditions and the mortality likelihood for most medical conditions. Our model is based on wearable trackers, mobile phone data and national health statistics.
We must understand who are the most vulnerable individuals amongst us to suffer from COVID-19. This will allow us to prioritise the resources needed to limit the virus’ impact.
Qumata offers support for the community by tracking COVID-19’s fatality rates and related factors to help prevent any further fatalities.
What can you do to help?
If you would like to contribute towards our efforts and have read the latest studies, reports and information on COVID-19, please add more sources and reports in the comments below in order for us to keep up to date on this valuable information.
Sources
1 - Fatality per country: Report from Mc Kinsey Covid 19 Update 20 of March. Case Fatality calculated as ( total deaths) / (total cases) – this rate is evolving and dependent upon several factors, including number of suspected cases that are tested. For the US, WHO data is lagging news reports for the US; In the US, CDC &#x26; WHO reports.
<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/risk/our%20insights/covid%2019%20implications%20for%20business/covid%2019%20march%2025/covid-19-facts-and-insights-march-25-v3.ashx">https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business</a>
2 - Comparison with the flu. " Case fatality rates: COVID-19 vs. US seasonal flu ". <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#how-do-case-fatality-rates-from-covid-19-compare-to-those-of-the-seasonal-flu">https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#how-do-case-fatality-rates-from-covid-19-compare-to-those-of-the-seasonal-flu
</a>
3 - Fatality per age group: Report from Mc Kinsey Covid 19 Update 20 of March. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/covid-19-implications-for-business
4 - Coronavirus: early-stage case fatality rates by underlying health condition in Italy. https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_17_marzo-v2.pdf
5 - Coronavirus: Case fatality rate of COVID-19 by preexisting health conditions.https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-preexisting-health-conditions

COVID-19 Fatality Rate (3rd April 2020)

COVID-19 is a virus affecting countries all over the world and we know that your timelines are filled with information on ways to avoid spreading or catching the virus so we won’t repeat them but will advise that you follow the advice of medical and government authorities at this time.

Many countries have implemented different levels of ‘social distancing’ measures and strict priority rules for masks, ventilators, tests and other essential materials that are in limited supply. And these are having very different impact.

Here we take a look at the key differences in mortality rates and the key factors that require most of our attention.

### Mortality rate varies in every country

The mortality rate is a direct result of several factors including the efficiency of the national care system, the spread of the virus over time among the population, the distribution of the population demographic (age-group) and the distribution of pre-existing conditions among each age-group.

Today’s mortality rates are around 4% for China, 0.9% for South Korea, 6.8% in Italy and 2.4% in the US.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of these rates, looking at the US flu statistics, these mortality figures range between 12 to 24 times higher than the usual seasonal flu rates.

### Mortality rate is positively correlated with age

We looked at the mortality rate for COVID-19 in relation to age group to get better insights and found that the correlation between mortality and age is very strong for all the countries included. Fatalities appear to increase monotonically with age and most of the fatalities occur in the 60 years+ age-group.

<img src="/img/blog/Graph-Covid by Age.png" alt="Graph-Covid by Age" className="img" />

### Mortality rate appears to be compounded by pre-existing conditions

In a recent study on the Italian COVID-19 cases, 99% of their fatalities had pre-existing conditions, with high blood pressure reported in 76% of the cases. The most prevalent pre existing conditions in the Italian fatalities are:

● Ischemic heart disease 33%

● Atrial fibrillation 24.5%

● Stroke 9.6%

● High blood pressure 76.1%

● Diabetes mellitus 35.5%

● Dementia .8%

● COPD 13.2%

● Active cancer in the past 5 years 20,3%

● Chronic liver disease 3.1%

● Chronic renal failure 18%

In China, the following pre-existing conditions were also identified as very high factors of vulnerability for individuals:

● Cardiovascular diseases

● Diabetes

● Chronic respiratory diseases

● Hypertension

● Cancer

### Why Qumata is gathering this type of data?

Qumata specialises in evaluating the risk to be diagnosed for hundreds of medical conditions and the mortality likelihood for most medical conditions. Our model is based on wearable trackers, mobile phone data and national health statistics.

We must understand who are the most vulnerable among us for COVID-19 to allow us to prioritise the resources needed to limit the virus’ impact.

Qumata is offering support for the community by tracking COVID-19’s fatality rates and factors so we have more information to help prevent further fatalities.

### What can you do to help?

If you would like to contribute to our efforts and have read the latest studies, reports and information on COVID-19, please contribute to our research by adding more sources and reports in the comments below so that we can keep up to date on this valuable information.

### Sources:

> 1. ● Fatality per country : Report from Mc Kinsey Covid 19 Update 16 of March. Case Fatality calculated as ( total deaths) / (total cases) – this rate is evolving and dependent upon several factors, including number of suspected cases that are tested. For the US, WHO data is lagging news reports for the US; In the US, CDC & WHO reports >1,600 cases; NYTimes reports >3,600 cases Source: WHO situation reports, US CDC, press search

> 2. ● Comparison with the flu. " Case fatality rates: COVID-19 vs. US seasonal flu ". https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

> 3. ● Fatality per age group : Report from Mc Kinsey Covid 19 Update 16 of March. For Italy: Data reported from China Feb 11 reports 2.3%, however latest deaths/cases from WHO indicates this may be higher. Source: l’institution Superiore. Di Sanità (ISS) Italy, WHO, Korea CDC, China CDC

> 4. ● Coronavirus: early-stage case fatality rates by underlying health condition in China " https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

COVID-19 is a virus affecting countries all over the world and we know that your timelines are filled with information on ways to avoid spreading or catching the virus so we won’t repeat them but will advise that you follow the advice of medical and government authorities at this time.
Many countries have implemented different levels of ‘social distancing’ measures and strict priority rules for masks, ventilators, tests and other essential materials that are in limited supply. And these are having very different impact.
Here we take a look at the key differences in mortality rates and the key factors that require most of our attention.
<h3>Mortality rate varies in every country</h3>
The mortality rate is a direct result of several factors including the efficiency of the national care system, the spread of the virus over time among the population, the distribution of the population demographic (age-group) and the distribution of pre-existing conditions among each age-group.
Today’s mortality rates are around 4% for China, 0.9% for South Korea, 6.8% in Italy and 2.4% in the US.
To give you an idea of the magnitude of these rates, looking at the US flu statistics, these mortality figures range between 12 to 24 times higher than the usual seasonal flu rates.
<h3>Mortality rate is positively correlated with age</h3>
We looked at the mortality rate for COVID-19 in relation to age group to get better insights and found that the correlation between mortality and age is very strong for all the countries included. Fatalities appear to increase monotonically with age and most of the fatalities occur in the 60 years+ age-group.
<h3>Mortality rate appears to be compounded by pre-existing conditions</h3>
In a recent study on the Italian COVID-19 cases, 99% of their fatalities had pre-existing conditions, with high blood pressure reported in 76% of the cases. The most prevalent pre existing conditions in the Italian fatalities are:
● Ischemic heart disease 33%
● Atrial fibrillation 24.5%
● Stroke 9.6%
● High blood pressure 76.1%
● Diabetes mellitus 35.5%
● Dementia .8%
● COPD 13.2%
● Active cancer in the past 5 years 20,3%
● Chronic liver disease 3.1%
● Chronic renal failure 18%
In China, the following pre-existing conditions were also identified as very high factors of vulnerability for individuals:
● Cardiovascular diseases
● Diabetes
● Chronic respiratory diseases
● Hypertension
● Cancer
<h3>Why Qumata is gathering this type of data?</h3>
Qumata specialises in evaluating the risk to be diagnosed for hundreds of medical conditions and the mortality likelihood for most medical conditions. Our model is based on wearable trackers, mobile phone data and national health statistics.
We must understand who are the most vulnerable among us for COVID-19 to allow us to prioritise the resources needed to limit the virus’ impact.
Qumata is offering support for the community by tracking COVID-19’s fatality rates and factors so we have more information to help prevent further fatalities.
<h3>What can you do to help?</h3>
If you would like to contribute to our efforts and have read the latest studies, reports and information on COVID-19, please contribute to our research by adding more sources and reports in the comments below so that we can keep up to date on this valuable information.
<h3>Sources:</h3>
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>● Fatality per country : Report from Mc Kinsey Covid 19 Update 16 of March. Case Fatality calculated as ( total deaths) / (total cases) – this rate is evolving and dependent upon several factors, including number of suspected cases that are tested. For the US, WHO data is lagging news reports for the US; In the US, CDC &#x26; WHO reports >1,600 cases; NYTimes reports >3,600 cases Source: WHO situation reports, US CDC, press search</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol start="2">
<li>● Comparison with the flu. " Case fatality rates: COVID-19 vs. US seasonal flu ". https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol start="3">
<li>● Fatality per age group : Report from Mc Kinsey Covid 19 Update 16 of March. For Italy: Data reported from China Feb 11 reports 2.3%, however latest deaths/cases from WHO indicates this may be higher. Source: l’institution Superiore. Di Sanità (ISS) Italy, WHO, Korea CDC, China CDC</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<ol start="4">
<li>● Coronavirus: early-stage case fatality rates by underlying health condition in China " https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>

COVID-19 Fatality Rate (30th March 2020)

Buying and selling risk is a highly complex activity. Firstly, one can never totally eliminate risk. If this was the case then nobody would pay a premium for it. That is why ‘risk-free’ assets only earn equal to the borrowing costs. Still, banks and insurance companies strive to mitigate, reduce, price and better manage risk than competitors.

One way to manage risk is to increase scrutiny. The logic being, the more information you can collect about your customer the better you can assess and price the risk of default or death. This works in most cases, however, it can be a double-edged sword. Increasing diligence and underwriting shrink the total addressable market. Longer onboarding journey is the biggest reason for drop-out rates and financial services have the worst track record at a whopping [84% of started applications, being abandoned](https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/uk/opinion/how-to-improve-customer-experience-in-insurance-103395.aspx). Customers hate sharing tons of personal and professional information. These long checklists and questionnaires cover topics that sometimes customers themselves are not aware of. Younger generations cannot and, most likely, will not navigate this complicated buying experience.

An equally detrimental impact takes place internally. Deploying a lot of resources for risk assessment can be costly. Disjointed legacy systems and a multitude of external sources combine to provide the assessment required to make a decision. Over the years, especially after the financial crisis, these requirements have grown exponentially while stagnant revenues and low-interest rates have squeezed profits. Something the US insurance industry was [facing in 2016](https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-profit-optimization-and-cost-excellence-for-insurers/$File/ey-profit-optimization-and-cost-excellence-for-insurers.pdf):

<img src="/img/blog/Premiums are stagnant costs are increasing.png" alt="Premiums are stagnant costs are increasing" className="img" />

Revenues have since started increasing but the sector remains under pressure. This pressure translates into cost-cutting measures - something the financial sector is perpetually engaged in. Inevitably employees, especially in operations and risk management come under pressure. GenRe calculated that last year a full-time underwriter was assessing over [6,000 health risk applications annually](https://www.genre.com/knowledge/publications/surveylhgroupeoi19-en.html), almost 24 a day, three every hour. Such demands erode morale and deteriorate the quality of outcomes.

<img src="/img/blog/promo6.png" alt="promo6" className="img" />

<img src="/img/blog/Radar 1.png" alt="Radar 1" className="img" />

Balancing and recalibrating the trade-off between risk assessment and cost pressures with the customer experience and employee engagement remains the big zero-sum challenge

Life and health underwriting gets around this trade-off by pooling risk. Group life and health offerings cross-subsidise healthy and unhealthy individuals to manage portfolio risk. However, the lack of individual insights leads to uncompetitive pricing. An insurer faced with sub-optimal loss-ratio would be hard-pressed to increase risk assessment coverage to optimize pricing and reduce claims.

Such zero-sum challenges can only be solved with technological transformations. Just like centralised and electronic credit histories increased scrutiny while cutting down on paper and time. Most recently challenger banks leveraged troves of biometric data to streamline ‘know-your-customer’ checks to offer full banking services in minutes.

This trove of biometric data is also revolutionising health risk assessments for insurance policies and making it easier, to come back to my earlier point, to increase scrutiny without any additional effort for the applicant.

<img src="/img/blog/Wearables.png" alt="Wearables" className="img" />

By 2022 there will be [over 1 billion connected wearable devices](https://www.statista.com/statistics/487291/global-connected-wearable-devices/) monitoring an increasingly vast range of biometrics in real-time. Jut smartphones alone carry enough health information for a comprehensive health assessment with a level of accuracy much higher than traditional approaches employed by insurers.

Due to both the level of detail in the measure data (e.g. minutely heart-rate, activity, ECG, etc. readings) and the quick, digital API connection to given data sources, insurers have access to a quick yet incredibly accurate way of judging risk.

If you are a health or life insurer looking to utilise new digital data sources in your underwriting to increase profitability through reduced application times and increased accuracy, please reach out to Qumata via contact@qumata.com

Buying and selling risk is a highly complex activity. Firstly, one can never totally eliminate risk. If this was the case then nobody would pay a premium for it. That is why ‘risk-free’ assets only earn equal to the borrowing costs. Still, banks and insurance companies strive to mitigate, reduce, price and better manage risk than competitors.
One way to manage risk is to increase scrutiny. The logic being, the more information you can collect about your customer the better you can assess and price the risk of default or death. This works in most cases, however, it can be a double-edged sword. Increasing diligence and underwriting shrink the total addressable market. Longer onboarding journey is the biggest reason for drop-out rates and financial services have the worst track record at a whopping <a href="https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/uk/opinion/how-to-improve-customer-experience-in-insurance-103395.aspx">84% of started applications, being abandoned</a>. Customers hate sharing tons of personal and professional information. These long checklists and questionnaires cover topics that sometimes customers themselves are not aware of. Younger generations cannot and, most likely, will not navigate this complicated buying experience.
An equally detrimental impact takes place internally. Deploying a lot of resources for risk assessment can be costly. Disjointed legacy systems and a multitude of external sources combine to provide the assessment required to make a decision. Over the years, especially after the financial crisis, these requirements have grown exponentially while stagnant revenues and low-interest rates have squeezed profits. Something the US insurance industry was <a href="https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-profit-optimization-and-cost-excellence-for-insurers/$File/ey-profit-optimization-and-cost-excellence-for-insurers.pdf">facing in 2016</a>:
Revenues have since started increasing but the sector remains under pressure. This pressure translates into cost-cutting measures - something the financial sector is perpetually engaged in. Inevitably employees, especially in operations and risk management come under pressure. GenRe calculated that last year a full-time underwriter was assessing over <a href="https://www.genre.com/knowledge/publications/surveylhgroupeoi19-en.html">6,000 health risk applications annually</a>, almost 24 a day, three every hour. Such demands erode morale and deteriorate the quality of outcomes.
Balancing and recalibrating the trade-off between risk assessment and cost pressures with the customer experience and employee engagement remains the big zero-sum challenge
Life and health underwriting gets around this trade-off by pooling risk. Group life and health offerings cross-subsidise healthy and unhealthy individuals to manage portfolio risk. However, the lack of individual insights leads to uncompetitive pricing. An insurer faced with sub-optimal loss-ratio would be hard-pressed to increase risk assessment coverage to optimize pricing and reduce claims.
Such zero-sum challenges can only be solved with technological transformations. Just like centralised and electronic credit histories increased scrutiny while cutting down on paper and time. Most recently challenger banks leveraged troves of biometric data to streamline ‘know-your-customer’ checks to offer full banking services in minutes.
This trove of biometric data is also revolutionising health risk assessments for insurance policies and making it easier, to come back to my earlier point, to increase scrutiny without any additional effort for the applicant.
By 2022 there will be <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/487291/global-connected-wearable-devices/">over 1 billion connected wearable devices</a> monitoring an increasingly vast range of biometrics in real-time. Jut smartphones alone carry enough health information for a comprehensive health assessment with a level of accuracy much higher than traditional approaches employed by insurers.
Due to both the level of detail in the measure data (e.g. minutely heart-rate, activity, ECG, etc. readings) and the quick, digital API connection to given data sources, insurers have access to a quick yet incredibly accurate way of judging risk.
If you are a health or life insurer looking to utilise new digital data sources in your underwriting to increase profitability through reduced application times and increased accuracy, please reach out to Qumata via contact@qumata.com

How to judge risk with less risk

One of the most profound impact of e-commerce has been on customer expectations. From long queues and tedious questionnaires we now buy in few minutes and fewer clicks. In this age of decreasing attention spans and increasing options life insurance is still stuck in the ‘90s.

Although quickly digitising, insurance remains the worst performer in abandonment rates (shoppers starting an application but not finishing it) at a whopping 83.7%. Applications in banking and insurance are notoriously long and complicated. In banking, challengers are gaining market share predominantly by accelerating and elevating the customer on-boarding experience. Nobody wants to wait two weeks to use their own money.

Contrastly insurance has hit a plateau in improving that journey. While many of us can get protection disclosing very little information and friendly interface it is never the best price. Worst yet for the majority of the customers who still have to either (i) give personal and sensitive information about their and their family’s history or (ii) go for a medical exam for which the waiting time will be two weeks and a cost of up to £150.

A recent survey by Signicat reveals the top reasons for abandoning an application are:

<img src="/img/blog/Untitled.png" alt="Untitled" className="img" />

Bottom line is that customers don’t want to share too much or spend too long.

ReMark Group’s brilliant [survey of consumer trends of the life insurance market](https://remarkgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/GCS2019-Beyond-Life-3.pdf) show that almost 3/4th of the customers want the buying process to be completed the same day it starts:

<img src="/img/blog/What lenght of time is acceptable (1).png" alt="What lenght of time is acceptable" className="img" />

Against this Munich Re calculated the average on-boarding time for life and health insurance policies is 52 days.

This provides a massive opportunity for challengers. Revolut and Monzo leveraged an easy-to-use and secure app with advanced data services to eliminate the need for long and unpleasant ‘know-your-customer’ journey.

Similarly digital marketing companies have become very good at finding the right people at the right time in their lives but the tedious customer journey and complex terms results in appalling [conversion rates of just over 2%](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/17/what-is-a-good-conversion-rate). Moving the needle on this number can be an unbeatable edge.

Digitisation of health monitoring and assessment have crossed the tipping point with numerous improvements in prediction and prevention. This information is available to insurers from medical records to health and fitness monitors. There is enough data available on people in real-time to formulate a health assessment which is more accurate, dynamic and fair and helps people improve their health outcomes.

Increasing number of entrants are focused on a simple value proposition and a fast and easy on-boarding process. The challenge remains in leveraging the right data sources to strike the perfect balance between i) speed, ii) accuracy and iii) acceptance rate.

We are working with challenger and incumbent insurers to resolve these challenges.

One of the most profound impact of e-commerce has been on customer expectations. From long queues and tedious questionnaires we now buy in few minutes and fewer clicks. In this age of decreasing attention spans and increasing options life insurance is still stuck in the ‘90s.
Although quickly digitising, insurance remains the worst performer in abandonment rates (shoppers starting an application but not finishing it) at a whopping 83.7%. Applications in banking and insurance are notoriously long and complicated. In banking, challengers are gaining market share predominantly by accelerating and elevating the customer on-boarding experience. Nobody wants to wait two weeks to use their own money.
Contrastly insurance has hit a plateau in improving that journey. While many of us can get protection disclosing very little information and friendly interface it is never the best price. Worst yet for the majority of the customers who still have to either (i) give personal and sensitive information about their and their family’s history or (ii) go for a medical exam for which the waiting time will be two weeks and a cost of up to £150.
A recent survey by Signicat reveals the top reasons for abandoning an application are:
Bottom line is that customers don’t want to share too much or spend too long.
ReMark Group’s brilliant <a href="https://remarkgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/GCS2019-Beyond-Life-3.pdf">survey of consumer trends of the life insurance market</a> show that almost 3/4th of the customers want the buying process to be completed the same day it starts:
Against this Munich Re calculated the average on-boarding time for life and health insurance policies is 52 days.
This provides a massive opportunity for challengers. Revolut and Monzo leveraged an easy-to-use and secure app with advanced data services to eliminate the need for long and unpleasant ‘know-your-customer’ journey.
Similarly digital marketing companies have become very good at finding the right people at the right time in their lives but the tedious customer journey and complex terms results in appalling <a href="https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/17/what-is-a-good-conversion-rate">conversion rates of just over 2%</a>. Moving the needle on this number can be an unbeatable edge.
Digitisation of health monitoring and assessment have crossed the tipping point with numerous improvements in prediction and prevention. This information is available to insurers from medical records to health and fitness monitors. There is enough data available on people in real-time to formulate a health assessment which is more accurate, dynamic and fair and helps people improve their health outcomes.
Increasing number of entrants are focused on a simple value proposition and a fast and easy on-boarding process. The challenge remains in leveraging the right data sources to strike the perfect balance between i) speed, ii) accuracy and iii) acceptance rate.
We are working with challenger and incumbent insurers to resolve these challenges.

Calling for a faster, easier purchase experience

In a recent Qumata panel discussion, Ross Campbell, chief underwriter and lead for digital engagement at Gen Re acknowledged the pressure placed on the traditional snapshot underwriting process for long-term Life and Health policies, that are by nature designed to last a lifetime.

“If your health improves there’s no way to take that into consideration. Digital technology may allow a different approach between policy issue and claim,” Campbell said.

He noted the potential for pricing shifts or changes to the scope of coverage that can be offered between inception and a decade later, particularly within a continually shifting field of study such as medicine.

Andrew Doran, Aviva’s underwriting strategy lead, speaking as part of the panel discussion suggested technology could help reduce the subjectivity of medical opinion.

“Currently, we have one chance to get our underwriting assessment right for a policy that can be in place for up to 50 years,” he said. “A specialist may give their view of someone’s health but there are few medical studies that span 50 years, which can lead to a mismatch between medical opinion and the insurers, longer term, view of the risk.”

<img src="/img/blog/Audience.jpg" alt="Audience" className="img" />

Campbell suggested insurers needed to get in step with customers, who are increasingly proactive about their health.

“Digital solutions are being prescribed by the NHS, using wallets of information about people’s health. There’s a paradigm change in the digital health revolution, and shouldn’t insurers get in step with that?” he asked.

Doran agreed wholeheartedly. “If that’s not where the insurance is within five years then we’re missing a massive trick,” he said.

Insurers need to sculpt tools for interacting with customers with a mix of relevance and convenience to provide something short of diagnostic but as an early predictor of likely changes in health, he suggested.

He added that preventative analytics for such tools are still in their infancy. “A step-change comes when we can introduce great preventative technology into the customer ecosystem,” he added.

Incentives for healthier habits will need to be part of such a step-change, although Campbell noted this is not new, citing Vitality, but that trust is core to working closely with incentives based on customers’ data.

Also speaking on the panel was Etienne Bourdon, co-founder and chief operating officer for Qumata, he believes that "Insurance ought to be better recognised as a social good for sharing the cost of pain.”

“We have to build trust by being transparent and maybe also by providing additional services. If we can get data collection right then we can probably change the underwriting paradigm,” he continued.

"That’s the prize that Qumata is trying to reach,” Bourdon added.

### Closing the gap

<img src="/img/blog/Reza Presenting.jpeg" alt="Reza Presenting" className="img" />

AI’s increasing ability to analyse and detect patterns within vast amounts of data mean enormous opportunities within the field of medicine, was emphasised by Reza Khorshidi, principal investigator for deep learning and medicine for the University of Oxford in his presentation.

It provides the ability to massively boost the abilities of all the best doctors, who can only ever see so many patients and symptoms and amass so much experience within a lifetime of work.

“Advanced deep learning works in medicine; we can predict 300 diseases with a single model,” Khorshidi said.

Patents in AI are growing exponentially each year, he stressed, adding that for insurers the benefits should be obvious.

“There’s still a \$3.5trn health protection gap outside the EU and US. Nobody has ownership of that risk,” said Khorshidi. “The question is: 'Who will respond to these problems sooner and better?’”

In a recent Qumata panel discussion, Ross Campbell, chief underwriter and lead for digital engagement at Gen Re acknowledged the pressure placed on the traditional snapshot underwriting process for long-term Life and Health policies, that are by nature designed to last a lifetime.
“If your health improves there’s no way to take that into consideration. Digital technology may allow a different approach between policy issue and claim,” Campbell said.
He noted the potential for pricing shifts or changes to the scope of coverage that can be offered between inception and a decade later, particularly within a continually shifting field of study such as medicine.
Andrew Doran, Aviva’s underwriting strategy lead, speaking as part of the panel discussion suggested technology could help reduce the subjectivity of medical opinion.
“Currently, we have one chance to get our underwriting assessment right for a policy that can be in place for up to 50 years,” he said. “A specialist may give their view of someone’s health but there are few medical studies that span 50 years, which can lead to a mismatch between medical opinion and the insurers, longer term, view of the risk.”
Campbell suggested insurers needed to get in step with customers, who are increasingly proactive about their health.
“Digital solutions are being prescribed by the NHS, using wallets of information about people’s health. There’s a paradigm change in the digital health revolution, and shouldn’t insurers get in step with that?” he asked.
Doran agreed wholeheartedly. “If that’s not where the insurance is within five years then we’re missing a massive trick,” he said.
Insurers need to sculpt tools for interacting with customers with a mix of relevance and convenience to provide something short of diagnostic but as an early predictor of likely changes in health, he suggested.
He added that preventative analytics for such tools are still in their infancy. “A step-change comes when we can introduce great preventative technology into the customer ecosystem,” he added.
Incentives for healthier habits will need to be part of such a step-change, although Campbell noted this is not new, citing Vitality, but that trust is core to working closely with incentives based on customers’ data.
Also speaking on the panel was Etienne Bourdon, co-founder and chief operating officer for Qumata, he believes that "Insurance ought to be better recognised as a social good for sharing the cost of pain.”
“We have to build trust by being transparent and maybe also by providing additional services. If we can get data collection right then we can probably change the underwriting paradigm,” he continued.
"That’s the prize that Qumata is trying to reach,” Bourdon added.
<h3>Closing the gap</h3>
AI’s increasing ability to analyse and detect patterns within vast amounts of data mean enormous opportunities within the field of medicine, was emphasised by Reza Khorshidi, principal investigator for deep learning and medicine for the University of Oxford in his presentation.
It provides the ability to massively boost the abilities of all the best doctors, who can only ever see so many patients and symptoms and amass so much experience within a lifetime of work.
“Advanced deep learning works in medicine; we can predict 300 diseases with a single model,” Khorshidi said.
Patents in AI are growing exponentially each year, he stressed, adding that for insurers the benefits should be obvious.
“There’s still a $3.5trn health protection gap outside the EU and US. Nobody has ownership of that risk,” said Khorshidi. “The question is: 'Who will respond to these problems sooner and better?’”

Lifetime engagement with life and health customers may increase the focus on prevention and improve

Exciting developments in technology, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming the sometimes staid of life and health insurance (L&H) into something more engaging, triggering new challenges for the sector, according to speakers at a Qumata hosted event in London.

This mirrors a transformation going on within medicine itself, as more data produces new insights into diseases and artificial intelligence uses the new quantities of data to ask and answer new questions.

“To take an economist’s view on AI and medicine, it’s about bringing about a huge reduction in the cost of prediction,” said Reza Khorshidi, principal investigator for deep learning and medicine for the University of Oxford, speaking at the event.

Prevention is a prediction problem, Khorshidi emphasised. He cited revolutionary advances in AI that could allow e-retailer Amazon to pioneer anticipatory shipping, predicting and delivering orders before customers even shop for them, with an acceptable margin of error for mistakes leading to returns.

<img src="/img/blog/Audience.jpg" alt="Audience" className="img" />

### Customer journeys

“We’ve seen most leaps and bounds in gathering lots of data,” said Andrew Doran, Aviva’s underwriting strategy lead, speaking on the panel discussion. “Access to data facilitates innovation. And if we can use the data to predict risk better then we can price more accurately and innovate our propositions to best fit customers.”

The panel discussed reinsurer Gen Re’s new mobile application using facial analytics to help customers buying life and health policies, piloted earlier this year.

“Insurance as we know it not very fun and this is more fun,” said Ross Campbell, chief underwriter and lead for digital engagement at Gen Re. “The app demonstrates the potential of doing something differently, blending the traditional world we know already with something different.”

Improving the customer journey should be the goal for implementing such emerging technologies, emphasised Etienne Bourdon, co-founder and chief operating officer for Qumata. There are two basic components to this, he suggested.

“Time is vital because a long questionnaire is no good,” Bourdon said. “Digital works on making questions smaller and reducing time. There are many ways for phone and digital apps to improve the customer experience.”

Doran agreed that fitting information into discrete boxes can sometimes be a challenge. “When this is done by phone, some customers would rather tell their story than answer insurance questions,” he said.

<img src="/img/blog/Panel.jpg" alt="Panel" className="img" />

The flip side is adding to the risk by cutting out too much detail in data gathering by fixating on how to optimise customer experience. “There’s always a trade-off between making the life of the clients very easy and a good risk assessment,” he said.

Bourdon added a note of caution, “We know all too well in the insurance industry that if you make something that’s not good then you’re going to pay for it, maybe not now, but perhaps in five or ten years.”

Campbell also emphasised the challenges of pioneering new ways of gathering customer data and of blending new data with old.

“It all sounds very seductive but using facial recognition technology is not without its own trials. Firstly, it needs to be good and it needs to be accurate,” Campbell said.

“Sweeping away the old tech and bringing in something new always presents issues. Taking data can be a challenge. Different domains have different rules for what’s allowed and accessible and what’s not, for example. The insurance industry needs to face that challenge,” he added.

Doran warned about the risk of blindly following data which can lead to analytics inadvertently profiling and stigmatising groups. Technology is blind to this risk unless programmed.

“We use data responsibly, but we have seen instances where that isn’t the case and companies become in danger of marginalising groups of people,” he warned.

“You can follow the data and it will lead you to marginalise people outside of the system. It’s important that we use people’s data to be more inclusive and to open up insurance in ways that we haven’t previously.”

Doran also noted the inherent challenge to the insurance business model by shifting from the law of large numbers to specific risk selection which can threaten to exclude pockets of people, threatening to making high-risk customers uninsurable.

“There’s a place to recognise there are people who are very healthy and we should be treating them accordingly. However, people with chronic or other serious conditions can get left behind. We need to find dynamic solutions to make sure they’re not and that they continue to have a place to go,” he added.

Exciting developments in technology, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming the sometimes staid of life and health insurance (L&#x26;H) into something more engaging, triggering new challenges for the sector, according to speakers at a Qumata hosted event in London.
This mirrors a transformation going on within medicine itself, as more data produces new insights into diseases and artificial intelligence uses the new quantities of data to ask and answer new questions.
“To take an economist’s view on AI and medicine, it’s about bringing about a huge reduction in the cost of prediction,” said Reza Khorshidi, principal investigator for deep learning and medicine for the University of Oxford, speaking at the event.
Prevention is a prediction problem, Khorshidi emphasised. He cited revolutionary advances in AI that could allow e-retailer Amazon to pioneer anticipatory shipping, predicting and delivering orders before customers even shop for them, with an acceptable margin of error for mistakes leading to returns.
<h3>Customer journeys</h3>
“We’ve seen most leaps and bounds in gathering lots of data,” said Andrew Doran, Aviva’s underwriting strategy lead, speaking on the panel discussion. “Access to data facilitates innovation. And if we can use the data to predict risk better then we can price more accurately and innovate our propositions to best fit customers.”
The panel discussed reinsurer Gen Re’s new mobile application using facial analytics to help customers buying life and health policies, piloted earlier this year.
“Insurance as we know it not very fun and this is more fun,” said Ross Campbell, chief underwriter and lead for digital engagement at Gen Re. “The app demonstrates the potential of doing something differently, blending the traditional world we know already with something different.”
Improving the customer journey should be the goal for implementing such emerging technologies, emphasised Etienne Bourdon, co-founder and chief operating officer for Qumata. There are two basic components to this, he suggested.
“Time is vital because a long questionnaire is no good,” Bourdon said. “Digital works on making questions smaller and reducing time. There are many ways for phone and digital apps to improve the customer experience.”
Doran agreed that fitting information into discrete boxes can sometimes be a challenge. “When this is done by phone, some customers would rather tell their story than answer insurance questions,” he said.
The flip side is adding to the risk by cutting out too much detail in data gathering by fixating on how to optimise customer experience. “There’s always a trade-off between making the life of the clients very easy and a good risk assessment,” he said.
Bourdon added a note of caution, “We know all too well in the insurance industry that if you make something that’s not good then you’re going to pay for it, maybe not now, but perhaps in five or ten years.”
Campbell also emphasised the challenges of pioneering new ways of gathering customer data and of blending new data with old.
“It all sounds very seductive but using facial recognition technology is not without its own trials. Firstly, it needs to be good and it needs to be accurate,” Campbell said.
“Sweeping away the old tech and bringing in something new always presents issues. Taking data can be a challenge. Different domains have different rules for what’s allowed and accessible and what’s not, for example. The insurance industry needs to face that challenge,” he added.
Doran warned about the risk of blindly following data which can lead to analytics inadvertently profiling and stigmatising groups. Technology is blind to this risk unless programmed.
“We use data responsibly, but we have seen instances where that isn’t the case and companies become in danger of marginalising groups of people,” he warned.
“You can follow the data and it will lead you to marginalise people outside of the system. It’s important that we use people’s data to be more inclusive and to open up insurance in ways that we haven’t previously.”
Doran also noted the inherent challenge to the insurance business model by shifting from the law of large numbers to specific risk selection which can threaten to exclude pockets of people, threatening to making high-risk customers uninsurable.
“There’s a place to recognise there are people who are very healthy and we should be treating them accordingly. However, people with chronic or other serious conditions can get left behind. We need to find dynamic solutions to make sure they’re not and that they continue to have a place to go,” he added.

Data and technology are transforming the customer journey in life and health underwriting

Is it a big birthday, a twinge in the back or maybe starting your first job that makes you think ‘I need life or health insurance’?

Once the consumer has had their lightbulb moment, it is, however, not a smooth path to getting covered.

Once the decision is made that insurance is needed, the right product and company to provide it needs to be found. This is mainly done via speaking to your local broker or going down the modern way of buying your insurance online.

Regardless of which way, be it through your broker or the world wide web, the digital world slips away from the 21st-century consumer as one has to complete analogue health assessment processes of questionnaires and/or doctors’ visits that often makes the buying experience cumbersome and slow.

In fact, a recent Munich Re study **[1]** has shown that the average duration of an underwriting process in Life Insurance is 52 days, with only 14% of applicants being able to buy the policy in 1 day.

<img src="/img/blog/Screenshot 2019-09-13 at 15.44.35.png" alt="Screenshot 2019-09-13 at 15.44.35" className="img" />

With as negative a journey as that, it will come as no surprise that health and life insurers provide some of the lowest ranking customer experience (CX) in the industry **[2]**.

However, a problem as big as this must surely offer opportunities for growth and improvement. And that’s where I believe digital can and increasingly will make the difference.

A recent Mckinsey report **[3]** has suggested three ingredients for a winning CX: simplified product design, streamlined cost base and a delightful customer journey. Can digital data help with some of these?

I would assume so as a delightful customer journey, leveraging digital data for health assessments will see the process cut down from days and weeks to less than 5 minutes. Secondly, speed will also bring with it cost savings which ultimately will make their way into the hands of customers. Oh, and did I mention that through using digital data, accuracy is increased significantly, and the whole process will reduce costs as it is a fully automated process?

Undoubtedly, we are at just at the start of this journey, a recent study by Willis Towers Watson **[4]** found that just 6% of the life industry is currently using data from wearables in underwriting, but this is set to jump to 38% over the next two years.

What is clear is that the life and health industry needs to invest in the customer journey. To see growth in the market, fight off the existential threat from tech giants and start-ups and fulfil its role in providing societally valuable cover, the industry can only benefit from embracing digital data, and I’m proud that Qumata is working at the heart of this mission.

1. **[1]** https://www.munichre.com/site/mruk-allfinanz/get/documents_E229861857/mruk/assets.uk.allfinanz/Documents/Publications/Thought-Leadership/Five-New-Business-Dashboards.pdf

2. **[2]** https://www.forrester.com/report/The+US+Health+Insurers+Customer+Experience+Index+2018/-/E-RES142622

3. **[3]** https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/transforming-life-insurance-with-design-thinking

4. **[4]** https://www.willistowerswatson.com/en-GB/Insights/2019/07/factors-driving-investment-in-predictive-analytics-competition-and-customer-centricity

Is it a big birthday, a twinge in the back or maybe starting your first job that makes you think ‘I need life or health insurance’?
Once the consumer has had their lightbulb moment, it is, however, not a smooth path to getting covered.
Once the decision is made that insurance is needed, the right product and company to provide it needs to be found. This is mainly done via speaking to your local broker or going down the modern way of buying your insurance online.
Regardless of which way, be it through your broker or the world wide web, the digital world slips away from the 21st-century consumer as one has to complete analogue health assessment processes of questionnaires and/or doctors’ visits that often makes the buying experience cumbersome and slow.
In fact, a recent Munich Re study [1] has shown that the average duration of an underwriting process in Life Insurance is 52 days, with only 14% of applicants being able to buy the policy in 1 day.
With as negative a journey as that, it will come as no surprise that health and life insurers provide some of the lowest ranking customer experience (CX) in the industry [2].
However, a problem as big as this must surely offer opportunities for growth and improvement. And that’s where I believe digital can and increasingly will make the difference.
A recent Mckinsey report [3] has suggested three ingredients for a winning CX: simplified product design, streamlined cost base and a delightful customer journey. Can digital data help with some of these?
I would assume so as a delightful customer journey, leveraging digital data for health assessments will see the process cut down from days and weeks to less than 5 minutes. Secondly, speed will also bring with it cost savings which ultimately will make their way into the hands of customers. Oh, and did I mention that through using digital data, accuracy is increased significantly, and the whole process will reduce costs as it is a fully automated process?
Undoubtedly, we are at just at the start of this journey, a recent study by Willis Towers Watson [4] found that just 6% of the life industry is currently using data from wearables in underwriting, but this is set to jump to 38% over the next two years.
What is clear is that the life and health industry needs to invest in the customer journey. To see growth in the market, fight off the existential threat from tech giants and start-ups and fulfil its role in providing societally valuable cover, the industry can only benefit from embracing digital data, and I’m proud that Qumata is working at the heart of this mission.
<ol>
<li>
[1] https://www.munichre.com/site/mruk-allfinanz/get/documents_E229861857/mruk/assets.uk.allfinanz/Documents/Publications/Thought-Leadership/Five-New-Business-Dashboards.pdf
</li>
<li>
[2] https://www.forrester.com/report/The+US+Health+Insurers+Customer+Experience+Index+2018/-/E-RES142622
</li>
<li>
[3] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/transforming-life-insurance-with-design-thinking
</li>
<li>
[4] https://www.willistowerswatson.com/en-GB/Insights/2019/07/factors-driving-investment-in-predictive-analytics-competition-and-customer-centricity
</li>
</ol>

Can digital data transform the customer journey in life and health insurance?


Modern technology is transforming underwriting in the life and health industry as we know it, with impressive results.

In recent years Insurers have engaged more and more with tech innovations, such as Qumata, to streamline the underwriting process. How? Underwriters have the potential to process applications faster and more reliably than ever before, due to data analytics. This process enables users to receive specific quotes quickly and often with a better premium, using the Qumata model.

The life and health industry is transforming to where tech is delivering significant benefits to its customers’ lives and their financial returns. Health monitoring technologies, having once been the preserve of hospital settings, are now on our wrists and in our pockets. And the potential for further breakthroughs is extensive and includes improved monitoring of health behaviours, better elderly care and a safer working environment.

The benefits of these changes lead to a higher quality of underwriting.

The Need to provide an accurate and efficient service is one of the most substantial issues that life and health insurers face. Data analytic tools, such as Qumata, offer an alternative to costly medical exams and basic questionnaires by calculating health risks via personal data accessed from smartphones and wearables.

Three years ago, Royal London insurance developed a diabetes life cover that changed and became more or less expensive as the patient’s health changed. The product made changes based on an annual blood sugar measurement.

But what if underwriting decisions could be based on a monthly, weekly or daily blood sugar reading?

Qumata combines individualised data from digital data sources with its proprietary database, to provide accurate information that can quickly be processed by underwriters. Modern technology is enabling underwriters to become more efficient than ever before.

### Data sources and coverage

Where that data comes from, therefore matters a lot. Evidence suggests that fitness wearables are only worn by a cohort of self-selecting healthy individuals; thus, relying on their data alone could distort some underwriting assumptions. However, other data sources are available and being used by Qumata, should an applicant consent to it. They can include activity, sleep, social/emotional, nutrition, etc. collected by apps, EMR’s, etc. Clearly, data assessment is changing, and insurers need to adapt before they are behind.

Better data analytics technology will deliver a more responsive product and is currently disrupting a 300-year-old process for the better. Ultimately, life and health insurers need to provide accurate products cheaply and efficiently, and Qumata delivers a product that currently has the potential to identify the risks of over 800 medical conditions within minutes.

For success in this rapidly evolving area, life and health insurers need to invest now to learn the lessons and develop their business models. Those that see the benefits of convergence between the needs of customers, the demands of their business and fast-paced technological change will reap the underwriting benefits. Insurers that don’t adapt will likely be challenged by their existing competitors but by new market entrants amongst tech and information businesses that fully understand the benefits of knowing their customers well.


Modern technology is transforming underwriting in the life and health industry as we know it, with impressive results.
In recent years Insurers have engaged more and more with tech innovations, such as Qumata, to streamline the underwriting process. How? Underwriters have the potential to process applications faster and more reliably than ever before, due to data analytics. This process enables users to receive specific quotes quickly and often with a better premium, using the Qumata model.
The life and health industry is transforming to where tech is delivering significant benefits to its customers’ lives and their financial returns. Health monitoring technologies, having once been the preserve of hospital settings, are now on our wrists and in our pockets. And the potential for further breakthroughs is extensive and includes improved monitoring of health behaviours, better elderly care and a safer working environment.
The benefits of these changes lead to a higher quality of underwriting.
The Need to provide an accurate and efficient service is one of the most substantial issues that life and health insurers face. Data analytic tools, such as Qumata, offer an alternative to costly medical exams and basic questionnaires by calculating health risks via personal data accessed from smartphones and wearables.
Three years ago, Royal London insurance developed a diabetes life cover that changed and became more or less expensive as the patient’s health changed. The product made changes based on an annual blood sugar measurement.
But what if underwriting decisions could be based on a monthly, weekly or daily blood sugar reading?
Qumata combines individualised data from digital data sources with its proprietary database, to provide accurate information that can quickly be processed by underwriters. Modern technology is enabling underwriters to become more efficient than ever before.
<h3>Data sources and coverage</h3>
Where that data comes from, therefore matters a lot. Evidence suggests that fitness wearables are only worn by a cohort of self-selecting healthy individuals; thus, relying on their data alone could distort some underwriting assumptions. However, other data sources are available and being used by Qumata, should an applicant consent to it. They can include activity, sleep, social/emotional, nutrition, etc. collected by apps, EMR’s, etc. Clearly, data assessment is changing, and insurers need to adapt before they are behind.
Better data analytics technology will deliver a more responsive product and is currently disrupting a 300-year-old process for the better. Ultimately, life and health insurers need to provide accurate products cheaply and efficiently, and Qumata delivers a product that currently has the potential to identify the risks of over 800 medical conditions within minutes.
For success in this rapidly evolving area, life and health insurers need to invest now to learn the lessons and develop their business models. Those that see the benefits of convergence between the needs of customers, the demands of their business and fast-paced technological change will reap the underwriting benefits. Insurers that don’t adapt will likely be challenged by their existing competitors but by new market entrants amongst tech and information businesses that fully understand the benefits of knowing their customers well.

How integrating health databases and technologies can transform life and health underwriting?


We are moving into a new era where sharing individualised digital data becomes the everyday way consumers interact with life and health insurers. However, studies suggest that consumers are uncertain as to how they feel about sharing their data. Some studies show they are relaxed at the prospect (1) with one suggesting more than 60% of US consumers say they are interested in sharing their health data. In contrast, recent research by EY (2) shows that 72% are at least cautious about disclosing their digital data.

How should the insurance industry respond to these divergent opinions as it adapts its business to the age of digital data?

I believe the answer is to build trust with customers. The building blocks of trust are: guaranteeing to protect privacy, that digital information is safe from cyber criminals and that data gathered will be used to deliver more responsive and individualised cover in a faster, cheaper and more accurate way.

The big digital consumer brands have all come under scrutiny in recent months for their holding and management of customer data. And this month’s announcement by Amazon that its Alexa voice control device will partner with the UK’s National Health Service has raised these concerns to an even higher level with one commentator taking to twitter to ask:

How is the data encrypted?

Who has access to the data?

Where is the data stored?

Will the data be used for marketing?

Will the data be sold?

As a business that leverages personal data from wearable and mobile devices and combines that with big data from long-term health studies, Qumata is acutely aware of the need to protect individual data.

In fact, we take this belief so far that contrary to many in business we believe that regulation can be a positive force for improving data security and protection. AND I’d go so far as to say we love GDPR!

Its implementation in 2018 and the work undertaken to meet the requirements in the run up to it, saw many businesses take active measures to improve the management of data.

One year on and the GDPR rules mean that consumers are increasingly aware of how and where their data is used and importantly are able to choose whether or not it is used. This element of choice is vital in the building of trust and in the sharing of health data from wearables and mobile devices.

Open and clear communication from users of data that makes clear how data is used, stored and shared is increasingly vital as we are all, from government to businesses and individuals, more likely to be subject to a cyber-attack.

Finally, organisations that are transparent and open about how they manage and protect their customers’ data will at least be perceived to operate ethically and to be leading by example. In return they may be offered greater levels of consumer support and trust.

In the end, the digital agenda is moving forward and the adoption of wearable and mobile health data solutions have the power to transform the life and health insurance business and we need to empower customers to feel confident to share their data. I believe that building confidence through a robust regulatory environment that is actively embraced by data users combined with transparency between, the individual wearable user, insurance company and data management business will ensure that the technology can deliver benefits to everyone across the life and health value chain.

1. **(1)** https://www.businessinsider.com/us-consumers-are-willing-to-share-data-with-health-insurers-2019-6?r=US&IR=T

2. **(2)** https://go.ey.com/30A3Bst


We are moving into a new era where sharing individualised digital data becomes the everyday way consumers interact with life and health insurers. However, studies suggest that consumers are uncertain as to how they feel about sharing their data. Some studies show they are relaxed at the prospect (1) with one suggesting more than 60% of US consumers say they are interested in sharing their health data. In contrast, recent research by EY (2) shows that 72% are at least cautious about disclosing their digital data.
How should the insurance industry respond to these divergent opinions as it adapts its business to the age of digital data?
I believe the answer is to build trust with customers. The building blocks of trust are: guaranteeing to protect privacy, that digital information is safe from cyber criminals and that data gathered will be used to deliver more responsive and individualised cover in a faster, cheaper and more accurate way.
The big digital consumer brands have all come under scrutiny in recent months for their holding and management of customer data. And this month’s announcement by Amazon that its Alexa voice control device will partner with the UK’s National Health Service has raised these concerns to an even higher level with one commentator taking to twitter to ask:
How is the data encrypted?
Who has access to the data?
Where is the data stored?
Will the data be used for marketing?
Will the data be sold?
As a business that leverages personal data from wearable and mobile devices and combines that with big data from long-term health studies, Qumata is acutely aware of the need to protect individual data.
In fact, we take this belief so far that contrary to many in business we believe that regulation can be a positive force for improving data security and protection. AND I’d go so far as to say we love GDPR!
Its implementation in 2018 and the work undertaken to meet the requirements in the run up to it, saw many businesses take active measures to improve the management of data.
One year on and the GDPR rules mean that consumers are increasingly aware of how and where their data is used and importantly are able to choose whether or not it is used. This element of choice is vital in the building of trust and in the sharing of health data from wearables and mobile devices.
Open and clear communication from users of data that makes clear how data is used, stored and shared is increasingly vital as we are all, from government to businesses and individuals, more likely to be subject to a cyber-attack.
Finally, organisations that are transparent and open about how they manage and protect their customers’ data will at least be perceived to operate ethically and to be leading by example. In return they may be offered greater levels of consumer support and trust.
In the end, the digital agenda is moving forward and the adoption of wearable and mobile health data solutions have the power to transform the life and health insurance business and we need to empower customers to feel confident to share their data. I believe that building confidence through a robust regulatory environment that is actively embraced by data users combined with transparency between, the individual wearable user, insurance company and data management business will ensure that the technology can deliver benefits to everyone across the life and health value chain.
<ol>
<li>
(1) https://www.businessinsider.com/us-consumers-are-willing-to-share-data-with-health-insurers-2019-6?r=US&#x26;IR=T
</li>
<li>
(2) https://go.ey.com/30A3Bst
</li>
</ol>

Life and health insurers should embrace regulation and open communication

At the start of 2017, there were 526 million connected wearable devices around the globe a figure that is expected to rise to 1.1 billion by 2022 (1). At the same time, Swiss Re (2) has estimated that the global life insurance industry has premiums of \$2.6 trillion. So the potential for interaction between the wearable and mobile technology revolution and life and health companies will see the coming together of some extraordinary numbers.

However, as we all know this technological revolution promises a lot more than just data points. Life and health insurers and their customers will mutually benefit from the focus on reducing morbidity and mortality advanced by the precise knowledge of medical risks.

This more positive relationship between the underwriter and insured, will not, however, solve many of the challenges the life and health market faces. These include the need to reduce its cost base, whilst measuring up to the complex and demanding regulatory environment it is subject - whilst not losing sight of the importance of improving profitability.

Undoubtedly the development of digital data that can be leveraged by the life and health sector is a vital step forward in these efforts. However, the use of this data will only bring real benefits when combined with credible algorithms, trained on large population data sets, that actuarial science can recognise and use to lead underwriting decision making and pricing.

But how can we underwrite better today and why should we invest in newer methods? Today’s life and health businesses have evolved a twin-track health assessment system for underwriting.

The first has the benefits of being relatively quick, and it’s certainly cheap as customers have to fill in their own questionnaire - effectively doing their own health assessment. In some cases, additional costs are incurred as it may need to be reviewed by a human being. The significant downside is that these self-assessments often lead to inaccurate or inconclusive data and are frequently subject to re-underwriting and further costs.

The second approach which uses one-to-one medically led health checks deals with the accuracy problem but is expensive to deliver and takes time, not just to perform, but to set up and plan - often not the preferred approach of younger consumers used to instant digital responses.

<img src="/img/blog/Graph1 (1).png" alt="Graph1 (1)" className="img" />

Having said that, improvements in the sector are emerging:

Each one of us collects a mass of digital data, which provides a record of health and lifestyle markers over time. Combining this data with access to a comparable, big data set, which is the backbone of actuarial life underwriting and we can replace the laborious self or medical assessments we currently use and make a fundamental change to the underwriting process.

Naturally, you need convincing big data to achieve this. Qumata uses exclusive data from over 1 million individuals for our digital assessments. This allows us to accurately predict the risk for diagnosis and mortality for over 800 medical conditions in just a few minutes.

With big data, combined with comprehensive individual information digitally delivered, the three components of the life and health underwriting process can be optimised. So it becomes fast, cheap and highly accurate.

<img src="/img/blog/Graph2 (1).png" alt="Graph2 (1)" className="img" />

There is no doubt that the life and health sector genuinely wants to be more responsive to the needs of customers and we can all welcome a shift that promotes health preservation and disease avoidance rather than simply mitigating the financial impact of death on loved ones.

By providing digital data as part of the underwriting process, the insurance industry is building trust with its clients, as consumers take greater control of their health. However, the real prize will come when insurers are able to use the relationship they have built with their clients to achieve better, more accurate underwriting decisions in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.

In my next blog, I’ll be looking at how we can give the consumer confidence that their data will be protected.

Luca Schnettler is the CEO of Qumata

**(1)** https://www.statista.com/topics/1556/wearable-technology/

**(2)** www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:a160725c-d746-4140-96ea0d206e9574/sigma3_2018_en.pdf

At the start of 2017, there were 526 million connected wearable devices around the globe a figure that is expected to rise to 1.1 billion by 2022 (1). At the same time, Swiss Re (2) has estimated that the global life insurance industry has premiums of $2.6 trillion. So the potential for interaction between the wearable and mobile technology revolution and life and health companies will see the coming together of some extraordinary numbers.
However, as we all know this technological revolution promises a lot more than just data points. Life and health insurers and their customers will mutually benefit from the focus on reducing morbidity and mortality advanced by the precise knowledge of medical risks.
This more positive relationship between the underwriter and insured, will not, however, solve many of the challenges the life and health market faces. These include the need to reduce its cost base, whilst measuring up to the complex and demanding regulatory environment it is subject - whilst not losing sight of the importance of improving profitability.
Undoubtedly the development of digital data that can be leveraged by the life and health sector is a vital step forward in these efforts. However, the use of this data will only bring real benefits when combined with credible algorithms, trained on large population data sets, that actuarial science can recognise and use to lead underwriting decision making and pricing.
But how can we underwrite better today and why should we invest in newer methods? Today’s life and health businesses have evolved a twin-track health assessment system for underwriting.
The first has the benefits of being relatively quick, and it’s certainly cheap as customers have to fill in their own questionnaire - effectively doing their own health assessment. In some cases, additional costs are incurred as it may need to be reviewed by a human being. The significant downside is that these self-assessments often lead to inaccurate or inconclusive data and are frequently subject to re-underwriting and further costs.
The second approach which uses one-to-one medically led health checks deals with the accuracy problem but is expensive to deliver and takes time, not just to perform, but to set up and plan - often not the preferred approach of younger consumers used to instant digital responses.
Having said that, improvements in the sector are emerging:
Each one of us collects a mass of digital data, which provides a record of health and lifestyle markers over time. Combining this data with access to a comparable, big data set, which is the backbone of actuarial life underwriting and we can replace the laborious self or medical assessments we currently use and make a fundamental change to the underwriting process.
Naturally, you need convincing big data to achieve this. Qumata uses exclusive data from over 1 million individuals for our digital assessments. This allows us to accurately predict the risk for diagnosis and mortality for over 800 medical conditions in just a few minutes.
With big data, combined with comprehensive individual information digitally delivered, the three components of the life and health underwriting process can be optimised. So it becomes fast, cheap and highly accurate.
There is no doubt that the life and health sector genuinely wants to be more responsive to the needs of customers and we can all welcome a shift that promotes health preservation and disease avoidance rather than simply mitigating the financial impact of death on loved ones.
By providing digital data as part of the underwriting process, the insurance industry is building trust with its clients, as consumers take greater control of their health. However, the real prize will come when insurers are able to use the relationship they have built with their clients to achieve better, more accurate underwriting decisions in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.
In my next blog, I’ll be looking at how we can give the consumer confidence that their data will be protected.
Luca Schnettler is the CEO of Qumata
(1) https://www.statista.com/topics/1556/wearable-technology/
(2) www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:a160725c-d746-4140-96ea0d206e9574/sigma3_2018_en.pdf