Award Applications

The Company
Healix Risk Rating (HRR), a Verisk Analytics Business, offers a suite of IT solutions that provide insurers with the ability to perform automated medical risk assessments online, via agents or within call centre environments. The HRR Travel Risk Assessment Tool – known as the Travel Black Box – is used by majority of travel insurers in Australia and New Zealand to risk assess individual’s pre-existing medical conditions, dominates over 90% of the UK travel insurance market, and is used in Spain and Canada in multiple languages. Globally, the Travel Black Box is used for approximately 17 million medical risk assessments per annum, and our Singapore, Malaysian, Indonesian and Japanese Travel Black Box solutions are ready to launch.

Travel Black Box
The HRR Travel Black Box software offers an ‘expert’ medical system to assess a traveller’s medical conditions logically and methodically using an algorithmic approach. More than 3500 common medical conditions are contained within the database which is updated on a quarterly basis. The questioning process results in the calculation of a medical score that can then be used by underwriters to place the expected level of risk on a linear scale. It is designed for use by non-medical staff and can be used in a web based environment to provide ‘online’ risk assessment by the traveller themselves.

The Travel Black Box product provides a consistent, reliable and simple means for risk rating an individual’s medical condition(s) for the purpose of travel insurance. This system enables declarations to be made via any method of distribution with outcomes produced immediately, allowing insurers to make instant cover decisions and generate additional premium where appropriate. The Travel Black Box has been developed and is maintained by medical and IT experts in the field of travel insurance and aviation medicine, with regular review ensuring that outcomes produced reflect the financial exposure presented to an insurer as a result of a customer’s pre-existing medical condition.

Underwriting
Leisure travellers with pre-existing medical conditions have for many years had those conditions either excluded from travel insurance cover or been charged disproportionate levels of additional premium. This has traditionally been due to insurers not having a measurable view of the risk that these individuals represent at the time of the sale. The vast majority of medical conditions do not present significant exposure to the insurer. With the loss of this potentially large market and the emergence of legislation, more insurers are looking for a cost effective risk-rating solution to allow them to quickly understand and potentially accept this increased risk, and exclude high risk. However, using the opinions of the customer’s own medical practitioner for an assessment of the risk can prove costly and time consuming and usually only provides a subjective opinion. This is often based on clinical evidence alone without consideration or knowledge of the destinations, the costs of healthcare and the standard of care that may be available overseas.

The Travel Black Box is a fact-based medical risk assessment tool, offering the ability for insurers to make accept/decline decisions and calculation of additional premium grounded in a clear understanding of risk and costs. The level of risk accepted is purely the decision of the underwriter based on risk appetite, and ultimately what level of risk is consistent with offering cover for declared conditions. One of the great benefits to the insurer is then collecting consistent data at point of sale regarding an individual which is stored with related policy sales data, accessible at the time of claim for adjudication on claim validity, and also available for statistical analysis of claims by country of claim and medical condition. The claims validation becomes much clearer and this has a follow on effect for the client. Determining whether a medical claim is covered or not covered becomes quicker, which is beneficial for both the insured, and the insurer.

Sales
HRR performs over 17 million screenings per annum globally, and has a significant presence in the APAC region with more than 1,000,000 medical screenings performed annually in Australia and New Zealand alone. HRR has extensive experience in developing new products that include the screening of medical conditions, as well as integrating into established products. Our research, development and investment has specifically focused on supporting the various distribution channels insurers now sell through. We have realised for some time that online sales of travel insurance with medical screening have increased dramatically with one insurer reporting an increase of 20% of online sales over call centre sales in a single 12 month period. It has been our focus to improve the customer journey by providing intuitive software, directing customers with minimal confusion and always providing a consistent underwriting outcome supported by global insurers.

Various features of the Travel Black Box facilitate the process of transparency to the customer, ensuring they are clear at point of sale as to what they should declare, and what they are covered for following the screening process and policy purchase. The Black Box also allows the presentation of conditions linked to any excluded conditions which also facilitates this transparency, and improves clarity regarding extent cover at point of claim.

From the customer's perspective, the advantages are an easy customer journey, resulting in an instant coverage decision. There is certainty regarding the future validity of any claims, and the ability for immediate cover decisions provides consumers with the ability to more readily compare products across the market.

From the insurer's perspective, there is an opportunity for better quote-to-sale ratio and fewer lost customers. Medical screening provides the facility to offer terms to individuals with medical conditions, collect additional premium, rendering products more competitive and offering more options to customer's with pre-existing conditions.

Technical Implementation
The Travel Black Box is fully integrated into the insurer's own policy sale platform, requiring no reconfiguration of current systems or platforms. A simple XML transaction between the insurer's sales platform and the Travel Black Box means that clients can implement and launch a fully medically underwritten product within 2 – 3 weeks. All the calculations, algorithms and presentation of question sets are maintained by HRR, however our clients have the ability to choose from multiple implementation models including an API integration or integrating HRR Pre-built web screens (Screening Library) which are accessed once the insurer's policy sales system notifies the Screening Library of a screening request (register screening). Our Screening Library is compatible with all high utilisation browsers and mobile devices to ensure a medical screening can be completed independent of distribution channel. Data updates of the medical content and algorithms within the Travel Black Box are produced quarterly and uploaded seamlessly into our LIVE and pre-production environments to ensure outcomes reflect current medical based research, claims auditing and client feedback.