As seen on: BusinessMirror
HEALTH. Insurance. Technology. Put them all together, and their promise of bringing a positive change to society and significant share to nation-building will rise.
Amid various innovations now taking place in both the health and surety industries, technology plays a pivotal role for their continued success and growth in the long run. Hence, it is important that industry leaders, key players and advocates work together to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable healthtech and insurtech sectors for the benefit of Filipinos.
Supporting the country’s growing healthtech industry, Metro Pacific Investments Corp.’s mWell serves as a fully integrated and fully digital health and wellness platform in the country.
“This is a fully integrated app experience. We’re in that space where we need to digitalize and bridge the digital divide. This app is that. From the time you select a doctor, all the way towards buying your medicine, and delivered straight to your house,” said Metro Pacific Health Tech mWell Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer Gary Dujali during a roundtable discussion organized by Digital Pilipinas, together with the Philippine Insurers and Reinsurers Association (PIRA), the Philippine Life Insurance Association (PLIA), and the Philippine Insurtech and Healthtech Association (PIHAI).
Innovative technological solutions
In the social protection space, Etiqa Philippines contributes by way of offering innovative technological solutions and its commitment to serve customers well through various digital touchpoints.
“We need to be able to provide excellent customer experience. What we have done is even before the pandemic hit, we were already developing our app-based solutions,” noted Rico Bautista, PLIA president and Etiqa Philippines president and chief executive officer (CEO).
He underscored the importance of a framework that helps stakeholders understand how an organization is managing risks and opportunities related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria.
For him, ESG is something that all must pursue. Bautista explained: “Digitalization and being part of Digital Pilipinas and the healthtech and insurtech associations allow us to push forward that ESG concept and initiative that we all should be having. We want to be at the forefront of this because we are serious about sustainability and ESG.”
For his part, PLIA General Manager and Data Protection Officer George Mina delved on the important changes in the insurance industry in the sphere of digitalization.
“The most significant is being able to sell life insurance on a digital basis. It used to be a face-to-face thing. If you look at the websites of life insurance companies, they’re getting more and more personalized (in terms of) branding of digital assistance,” he said.
Hyper-personalized digital banking solutions provider Inypay Founder and CEO Arivuvel Ramu discussed the insurance onboarding platform and the potential for insurtech growth.
“If you look at Insurtech on a global scale, it’s a $83 billion market share as of 2022. By 2028, the prediction for micro-insurance alone is $118 billion global market share. Out of that, if you look at Southeast Asia alone, as of 2022, it’s a $3 billion worth of market and by 2028, the potential market to grow is by $8.4 billion just for the microfinance sector alone,” he cited.
Teching up health, insurance further
DURING the event, findings of the initial research of The Voice of Digital Pilipinas were also revealed.
With focus on cybersecurity and data privacy, the study showed that government agencies are the most trusted application platforms in terms of mobile applications.
“This serves as an opportunity for the Philippine government. The trust factor is really high, with 3/5 Filipinos preferring government agency applications. This is followed distantly by applications from e-wallets and bank applications,” Tangere CEO Martin Penaflor said.
The Voice of Digital Pilipinas, a collaborative initiative by Digital Pilipinas, Global Fintech Institute, and Tangere that seeks to give a democratic voice to Filipinos, will come up with research on different topics including healthtech and insurtech to know the pulse of the Filipinos in various industries.
Digital Pilipinas Convenor Amor Maclang emphasized the need to back up local players in these sectors, which are also two of the very important work streams of their organization.
“Health and insurance are two very important aspects of our work. We will be having a series of programs for both healthtech and insurtech and grow these industries domestically. We are working on a possible execution of smart contracts and blockchain in the insurance space,” she bared.
“There will be a pitch fest and a hackathon because we realize that many of the insurtech players are foreign. We hope to encourage many insurtech founders coming from the Philippines and coming from Asean to join the pitch fest and hackathon and be part of the Digital Pilipinas Festival x Philippine FinTech Festival happening in November,” she said of their upcoming event, which will take place from the 21st to the 24th day of such month at the SMX Aura and in various co-located venues and innovation hubs across the country.
To register, please visit https://digitalpilipinas.ph.