We share – my care. How to ensure healthy and active senior life with a crowdfunded or peer to peer insurance?

Keywords: Community, Crowdfunding/peer-to-peer, Gamification, Elderly, Ecosystem, Value-based pricing, Value propositions in health insurance/service, Sharing economy

Focus Area
The new generations who leave the labor market have grown up with many opportunities, freedom of choice and influence to live the lives they want. They have high expectations that this live continues into old age, including absence of mental or physical illness that they could previously support through health insurance from their work.

Health insurance
There are several types of health insurance in Denmark. Common to all of them is that they cover the customer’s expenses for examination, treatment, rehabilitation, etc., and that the treatment takes place at private hospitals and by private practitioners and specialist doctors.

In addition to operating expenses, this insurance also covers the client’s expenses for physical therapy, chiropractic, psychological treatment, emergency medical assistance, treatment by specialist doctors, including psychiatrists, as well as the client’s own costs for certain types of alternative treatment.

The health insurance is primarily a part of your salary package or purchased through a spouse’s connection to the private labor market. The insurance stops when you step out of the labor market. The price of health insurance for people over 70 years is increasing and typically begins from around DKK 4,500 annually.

The social contract
People who make a “promise” with someone else are keener to keep their promise. For example, if you want to live a healthier life, your odds to do that is much higher, when you share your goals with someone else. For example. posting pictures on social media is a way to give a promise to your followers.

Can health insurance/services be based on this collective impact on health and well-being throughout senior life within value-based pricing (e.g. as crowdfunded or peer to peer insurance)?

Elderly
The amount of the world’s population over 60 years will nearly be doubled within 2050 – from 12% to 22%. As such, the numbers of elderly who will need care increases and therefore we must find new ways to ensure that more elderly are healthy and self-reliant.

Health and well-being are not necessarily synonyms. Most elderly have lost relations as they retired, friends and loved ones have passed away, and the children may live far away. Often the elderly is alone and it threatens their health.

Still more of the elderly population are interested in using technologies that can help them in their everyday lives.

Tryg’s interest in start-ups
Tryg is not an alternative to the public sector but wishes, through latest trends and technology (e.g. via start-ups), to complement the public health and create peace of mind in a changing world.

Challenge
Show us a peer to peer or crowdfunded insurance for the elderly (year 67+) leaving the labor market, where the social contract of the group of peers or crowd keep focus on health and well-being throughout life. What ties the elderly together and make them stay in the peer-network and what concerns/pain/risks can Tryg as an insurance company remove for the elderly?

Considerations
Business model… it’s in the mix

• Technology and innovation are essential to the sharing economy, since they help conducting business quicker and easier (the availability of cloud storage and big-data analytics, the use of social media and mobile devices).
• How did health insurance evolve? It started off with supplier/insurance to business (B2B) – 75% of the market – and extended a little to supplier/insurance to consumer (B2C).
• How did the sharing economy evolve? It started off with sharing unused resources between individuals, and then extended to consumer to consumer (C2C/P2P) and supplier to consumer (B2C) collaboration.
• We see a lot of development in the field of sharing economics and technology. On the contrary, we see a totally fixed development in Health Insurance models.
• We want to find the new business model based on sharing economics for a private market like P2P insurance, crowdfunding or something else… So, we think, that it is in the mix…
• In that case who should the peers or the crowd consist of? What could be the motivational factors to engage with the peers or the crowd? How could this be done easy and smart?
  
  

The P2P approaches include the following:

• A carrier model, which involves a P2P provider underwriting risk and distributing policies (TRYG). Examples include Hey Guevara (U.K.) and Lemonade (United States).
• A brokerage model, which involves a P2P provider acting as agent between insured and carrier. Examples include insureapeer (United States), Ledger (United States), and Uvamo (United States).
• A social network model, which is effectively a “crowdfunding” plan that connects people willing to contribute to cover another’s loss.
• A syndicate model, which allows people to pay to belong to a syndicate of people willing to cover losses of individuals in the syndicate. Syndicates typically do not cover large-loss items, such as autos or homes. Instead, they cover personal items, such as smartphones or bicycles. Examples include CommonEasy (Netherlands), CycleSyndicate (U.K.), Gaggel (U.K.), and so-sure (U.K.).
• No matter the business model, the fundamental element of P2P insurance is a group of people sharing in covering the deductibles for losses incurred by others in the risk group.
• Success for a P2P provider is driven by its ability to engender trust among its participants through the creation of transparency.
• While the primary motivation for participating in a P2P risk group appears to be sharing in covering deductibles, for many (both insureds and providers), the real motivation is to provide a sense of community and shared responsibility.
  
  

Apps

• Over 325,000 health and fitness related apps currently on app store and 4 million downloads per day, it is difficult to compete with a usage drop-off rate of 64% after just one month.
• A tech solution for Tryg will be valuable when:
• It’s simple and easy to use
• It motivates to continuous use
• It should be based on new technology (AR, AI, bots etc.) and rethinking the roles of the participants e.g. the insurer, the insured, the healthcare system (the ecosystem of healthcare). Will it create new ways and opportunities within the healthcare system?
  
  

Elderly

• From ‘needs analysis’ of services outside the public sector to value propositions. What content/pain should a health insurance/health service solve for the elderly and the elderly’s relatives?
• Single living and loneliness?
• Senior care – supporting the relatives?
• Need for securing worthy retirement?
• Do not have the time to be ill?
• Upgrading their lives with service?
  
  

Trends

• Seniors comprising a larger share of the population
• Living more active lives, maintaining youthful lifestyle
• Retirement equal years to realize dreams and goals
• Higher acceptance for taking on personal debt
  “Spend it all”
• Enjoying life, and willingly spend money to improve the everyday life
• living at home for as long as possible
• Increasing divorce rates and formation of new families

Links/access
P2P Insurance examples

• friendsurance.com/ (an insurance platform that serves to connect insureds and carriers. Friendsurance ensures that if a claim is made and approved by the carrier, then the deductible will be paid. If losses were minimal, everyone in the risk group gets back a portion of whatever amount is left in the deductible pool)
• https://www.lemonade.com/ (Lemonade’s mission is to reinvent the insurance industry by deploying technology that will replace the bureaucracy permeating most insurers and infusing transparency into all aspects of the insurance value chain)
• https://www.the-digital-insurer.com/dia/guevara-peer-to-peer- car-insurance/ (insuring their automobiles drivers form groups and pool part of their collective premiums together)
• http://www.insureapeer.com/ (The mission of lowering overall insurance costs for insureds by promoting peer risk-sharing. In this first stage, insure-a-peer is encouraging individuals to pool their car insurance deductibles with other common drivers as a mechanism to reduce their potential out-of-pocket expenses, at the same time complementing traditional insurance)
• inspeer.me/inspeer-launches-the-1st-peer-to-peer-insurance-service-in-france-2/ (allow people who suffer insurance losses to share their deductibles with a community of friends and family. Its mission is to revolutionize the world of insurance by facilitating connections between policyholders who want transparency in their insurance experience and who are looking for savings)
• den_sympatiske_forsikring (Peer to Peer model)
  
  

Elderly

• seniorliv/ensomhed-er-en-trussel-mod-det-sunde-%C3%A6ldreliv
• boomers-retiring-concierge
• sund-forskning.dk/artikler/aeldre-og-traening-torben-bremann/
• who.int (WHO facts)
• most-common-health-concerns-seniors/ (The 15 Most Common Health Concerns for) Seniors
• www.danskernessundhed.dk
  
  

Services for elderly

• https://www.joinhonor.com/ (Home care your family will love)
• http://relabee.com/, (Platform for relatives)
• https://www.carepredict.com/ , (US – senior service)
• https://www.careship.de
• www.fivestarconcierge.com/ (concierge for seniors)
• https://angel.co/carezapp, (concierge for seniors)
  
  

If you want to know more about Tryg and data related to the challenge, you can visit our websites:

• www.tryg.com
• www.tryg.dk