Insurers collect a lot of client data. All the tech folks think that if you have a lot of client data it stands to reason that you can monetize that by providing services based on wider use of the data. For them the data is at the middle of the model and any services that use the same data are natural line extensions. For example, if you are a medical insurer then any health service based on the data is relevant – primary care, preventative medicine, long run research studies, fitness tracking, you name it – anything that uses health data. Thus the logic runs that insurers could become data hubs.
The logic only appears to run that way because these folks haven’t had to look hard at the databases insurers actually use. They wouldn’t be happy if they did. Most of their grand ideas are based on using ‘health data’ but most insurers don’t have health ‘data’ they have the content of forms at a various erratic points in history: the application, some medical claims, a reinstatement form, and so on. Mostly the really cool data has been summarised into high level variables such as “ordinary rates” and left unchanged for a long time. Health data from claims are put into large categories associated with products, and if you are lucky, with claims codes, but these still make the information hard to use.
Couple that with the fact that insurers are not exactly known for innovation and you begin to suspect that they will not leverage their data in creative collaboration with clients and advisers.
But that doesn’t stop a long-run trend. Some people want to use their health data. Some people want clever new services to help them live better lives – and they will get those needs met. At the moment, slow though the wheels of technology seem to turn in health services, that looks like it will not be the insurers that do this. But it will be somebody.