Award Applications

The Digital Insurer Asian Insurance Innovation Award 2017 – Submission from Now Health International

Overview – Digital Insurance Solutions

As a modern international health insurance provider, we embrace technology, using it in every way possible to make the customer experience exceptional. We know that customers expect the best in digital innovation, so in response to this demand we have developed two innovative tools - a secure online portfolio and smartphone App - to ensure our members can easily utilise their international health insurance plan, anywhere in the world, anytime.

Our secure online portfolio enables our members to view their plan documents, submit claims online, request treatment pre-authorisation, and even introduce us to their favourite medical provider.

In just a few simple clicks, our smartphone App also enables customers to make claims, as well as search for their nearest medical provider, see the provider location on a map, make a call to book an appointment and add it to their calendars.

These tools not only enhance the customer experience, but also enable us to better meet our brand proposition to provide accessible, hassle free international health insurance.

Innovative Digital Business Strategy

Whilst other insurance providers also offer smartphone Apps or digital tools, ours have been specifically developed to align with our core business strategy - to provide a clear, innovative and accessible approach to international private medical insurance, ‘Now’.

Our digital tools are crucial to this strategy, and are designed to be easy to use while supporting us to deliver on our commitment to deliver fast and accurate service, including processing all claims within five working days.

For example the recent updates to our smartphone App and secure online portfolio have been specifically designed to make the claims process as easy as possible. Our digital claims process now follows a similar format to our hard copy claims form so it is familiar to members. However member information such as their plan number is automatically stored when they make a submission online, making the process quicker and simpler each time.

We also continue to update and upgrade our tools to ensure we are leveraging the latest technologies to better meet our members’ needs. In particular as an international health insurance provider, we have to meet the ever changing demands of our globally mobile members. For example we recently upgraded our smartphone App at the end of 2016 and our online portfolio in early 2017. Going forward we are looking at new digital functions to improve customer engagement such as virtual membership cards, so we can continue to maintain our position as the leading innovator in our industry.

Learnings and Improvements

Both our digital tools have taken extensive preparation and investment to launch, and we have worked to overcome a number of technological challenges to ensure they provide a seamless user experience.

During the smartphone App upgrade in 2016, we faced a critical issue as our database provider (Parse) closed down, so we had to completely rebuild our entire database using our own CMS. However, we embraced this set back as a unique opportunity to align our smartphone App and email/ web server, so they could be run from the same data source, which has provided improved benefits in the long term.

We have also continued to enhance our digital tools in response to feedback from our members and service teams (including via our annual Customer Satisfaction Survey). In the past year we have developed the following new features and updates to our secure online portfolio and smartphone App, to further improve the user experience.

Secure Online Portfolio:
• New function to submit and track claims online. We’ve added a new feature to enable members to submit claims online in just a few simple clicks, in response to demand for an easier online claims process.
• Upgraded Find a Medical Provider Tool, including making it easier for members to book appointments and get directions to the nearest specialist. This feature is now available via our secure online portfolio, website and smartphone App, to ensure customers can access the best care when they need it most.
• Enhanced functionality for Group Administrators to make it easier for them to add and edit employees to any Group plan, and also download data for internal reporting.

Smartphone App:
• A drop down menu to make it easier for customers to find a medical provider from either our comprehensive or restricted networks.
• Functionality to map the closest health professionals and get directions and contact details.
• An improved treatment list, so customers can easily pinpoint the condition they need to treat and the nearest specialist.
• Upgraded function brings our preferred medical providers to the top of the search, so customers always know where to find the best care.

We have also added a Simplified Chinese language toggle to both tools to meet the needs of our growing base of Chinese speaking customers in Asia. Both tools are also now optimised for smartphone and tablet, to cater for our increasingly digitally savvy members.

Impact

To date 4,901 of our customers have downloaded the smartphone App and a fifth of all claims are currently submitted using this tool. Our medical provider database on our App also continues to grow every two weeks.

Our secure online portfolio is well used by our membership base, with recent data from May 2017 showing more than 400 members logging in every day, and we expect usage to increase following our recent upgrade to the functionality.

Our 2016 Customer Satisfaction Survey also shows a 24% increase in the number of respondents that said it was easy to submit claims in comparison to last year, which is likely related to recent improvements to our digital tools.