HSBC Life, the insurance arm of HSBC, has invested US$20 million to upgrade its technology and introduce a range of new medical insurance services for clients, with sales to mainland Chinese clients back to pre-pandemic levels, according to a senior executive.
One of these improvements include slashing the time required for reimbursing online medical insurance claims from five days to just five minutes, starting from May 1, said Edward Moncreiffe, the insurer’s Hong Kong CEO.
“It has taken away all the hassle and inconvenience in Hong Kong,” he said, adding that this has been made possible because of the investment in artificial intelligence technology.
Most of the insurers need about five to seven days to process the claims submitted online, according to industry experts.
HSBC Life has also introduced Care+, a network of 3,000 doctors and clinics in Hong Kong and Macau, to provide payment-free medical services to its policyholders.
From Monday, HSBC Life will also publicly disclose its claims record. The company says its group medical payment ratio was 88 per cent and its individual medical insurance claim approval ratio was 91 per cent last year.
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The insurer said last year it paid HK$1 billion (US$127.4 million) in medical claims, with cancer among the major reasons for the claims.
“Our mission is to make healthcare more accessible and more preventive for the people of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area,” Moncreiffe said.
HSBC Life has been focusing on expanding health tech since last year, with the Covid-19 pandemic acting as a catalyst, driving awareness for the need for medical insurance.
The investment also comes amid Hong Kong’s ageing population, which is expected to see 3 million people suffer from chronic diseases, such as heart ailment, cancer, diabetes, and stroke to increase, in 2039, from about 2.2 million now, according to the government’s estimates.
The city’s elderly population is expected to double to 2.44 million by 2038, according to a 2019 report.
HSBC Life and the wealth management unit of HSBC have opened two paramedical centres in Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui over last two years to cater to their clients. Moncreiffe said a third centre will be opened later this year targeted at the Greater Bay Area customers, but the location has not yet been finalised.
Hong Kong recorded 4.41 million visitors in the first quarter, accounting for about 30 per cent of the average quarterly figure before the Covid-19 pandemic.
A HSBC survey conducted earlier this year showed 60 per cent of mainland visitors came to Hong Kong mainly to handle personal finance matters.
Moncreiffe said as of April, sales of HSBC Life policies to mainland Chinese visitors had returned to April 2019 levels, adding that the strong growth will continue for the rest of the year.
“It is back to pre-pandemic levels already,” he said. “This is strong evidence of demand from mainland visitors, particularly from the middle class segment, for health and wealth solutions in Hong Kong. We seeing pent up demand from three years of border closure.”
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John Zhu Yat-ping, the chief economist for Asia at Swiss Re Institute, said on Friday that residents in the Greater Bay Area were still interested in buying medical protection from insurers in Hong Kong, citing a survey conducted by Swiss Re Institute last August, which showed a quarter of the respondents preferred to buy medical insurance in Hong Kong.
“This is because Hong Kong offers more options, such as good quality hospitals and medical services that they may be unable to find elsewhere,” Zhu said.
“They can also get better treatment, better hospital rooms, shorter waiting time for operations while certain medicines are more readily available in Hong Kong than in the mainland.”
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