How consumer-mediated paths to EHRs can help life carriers offer a differentiated customer experience

How do you differentiate your term policies from your competitors'? And, more importantly, do consumers see them as different? When many consumers think of life insurance as a commodity, customer experience remains one of the few opportunities for differentiation.

Electronic health records (EHRs) are key to delivering a streamlined buying experience with the best mortality and pricing for most applicants. When we speak with life carriers, they tell us they’re more comfortable obtaining EHRs from HIPAA-enabled networks. However, HIPAA-enabled networks are only one part of the EHR market—and consumer-mediated networks are the other, essential, part of a hybrid approach to obtaining EHRs. Download our latest white paper to learn more. 

In this blog post, we’ll explore how consumer-mediated paths to EHRs can help life insurance carriers differentiate their customer experience and improve risk decisioning—and position for a future where consumers actively engage with their healthcare data.

Life insurance has been slower to evolve with shifting customer expectations

Customer expectations increasingly favor digital interactions for the greater ease with which they can interact with companies expectations, and their desire to control aspects of their lives. For example, companies like Mint and Nerdwallet put financial decisions in the palm of a customer’s hand, demonstrating that customers are interested in “boring” topics like personal finance—and that highly regulated industries can offer more engaging customer experiences.

Closer to home, just visit your colleagues in personal auto. Imagine telling a customer who needs a new auto policy that they have to go to an agent’s office, fill out a form and wait 30 days to see if they qualify for a policy.

Consumer-mediated paths to EHRs can help address consumers’ desire for ease and control, while also providing carriers access to critical medical data that enables faster, smarter decision-making.

So what’s holding life carriers back?

Misconception #1: Improving customer experiences means reducing touchpoints

Research from McKinsey shows that the more a customer interacts with their life insurance agent, the higher they rate their customer experience. Life customers that interact with their agents quarterly have an average customer experience score of 50, compared to 30 for those who speak annually and zero for those who speak less often.¹

Importantly, most consumers don’t have much experience buying life insurance and may feel uncertain about the product and process. That creates an opportunity for carriers to create positive customer touchpoints by interacting more, not less: by helping customers manage expectations about the process and feel more in control. For example, consider offering the life insurance equivalent of a pizza tracker: let people know the status of their application, what the next step is and how long things will take.

Similarly, consumer-mediated paths to EHRs require consumer consent. We advise carriers to incorporate the consent process into the application process, which consumers are already engaged with. This can be an opportunity to put the consumer in control of their health data—and to save them the inconvenience of a blood test or delay of waiting for the underwriter to get an Attending Physician Statement (APS).

Misconception #2: You can prioritize customer experience or risk decisioning, but not both at the same time

It’s no small task being a life underwriter. If someone’s buying a permanent policy, the pricing decision you make today will come to fruition in 60-70 years. It’s easy to believe that you can make smart risk decisions or improve the customer experience, but not achieve both at the same time.

To shift this thinking, we need to think differently about data. What might it look like to leverage data not just as points to drive an underwriting decision—but to get there faster, with less mortality slippage and in a way that fosters positive customer interactions?

Internal LexisNexis® Risk Solutions data analysis shows that the decision rate for data from consumer-mediated networks is 79%, meaning that out of 100 applicants with an EHR, an underwriter has made a decision on 79 of them without ordering additional data. In comparison, the decision rate for data from HIPAA networks is only 55%.

Carriers leveraging consumer-mediated networks have access to data that drives smarter, faster decisions—and improves the customer experience. Win win.

Misconception #3: Customers aren’t engaging with their healthcare data

We’ve already looked at Mint and Nerdwallet as examples of consumers using third-party apps to gain greater control over their financial health. Things are going that way with consumer health data, but it’s not there yet. Consider:

• Roughly 60% of people were offered a patient portal in 2020—an increase of 17 percentage points since 2014. Nearly 40% accessed their record at least once that year.²
• Two in five US adults use a health app and 35% use wearables. Among those that use a health app or wearables, they use them at least daily.³
• Among users of health apps, 7% are baby boomers, 23% are GenX, 45% are millennials and 25% are GenZ.⁴

To be clear, the data from health apps and wearables aren’t included in EHRs. However, adoption of health apps and wearables suggests consumers are engaged in, and interested in having more control over, their healthcare data.

Internal data from Human API, an affiliate of LexisNexis® Risk Solutions company, shows that key customer segments are already engaging with their health data, notably affluent buyers and older demographics. We observe that affluent buyers are active users of patient portals because of their efficiency and convenience. And despite misconceptions that older demographics are averse to technology, we observe that older individuals are the most active users of patient portals—which makes sense, since they use the healthcare system more than younger individuals.

Savvy carriers will begin thinking about what’s changing in the way consumers engage with their healthcare providers—and what that might mean for how they engage with applicants about their health data.

Customer experiences that fuel the future of life insurance

Let’s circle back to where we began. Customer experience is one of the few opportunities for life insurance carriers to achieve differentiation. Consumer-mediated paths to EHRs can help carriers do just that—to offer positive customer touchpoints that put consumers in control of their healthcare data.

Leading carriers are already leveraging consumer-mediated paths to improve risk decisioning and reduce cycle times.

What are you waiting for?

To learn more about why consumer-mediated paths to EHRs are essential to future-proofing your underwriting program, register to download our white paper.

Get answers to seven common questions carriers ask about consumer-mediated EHR networks.

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1 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/insurance/elevating-customer-experience-a-win-win-for-insurers-and-customers
2 https://www.healthit.gov/data/data-briefs/individuals-access-and-use-patient-portals-and-smartphone-health-apps-2020
3 https://www.businessofapps.com/news/two-in-five-us-adults-now-use-health-apps/
4 https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1181592/share-of-us-health-app-users-by-generation