International health insurance and services see increased demand

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, health insurer Allianz Care has reported a significant increase in demand for international health insurance services with year-on-year sales of private individual/family policies up 235% in Germany, 100% in Singapore and 65% in the UAE.

Some of the major uplifts in demand for health and wellbeing advice as well as digital health services include:

• 48% increase in web traffic to AllianzCare.com in March with a further increase of 83% in April as visitors are keen to keep up to date with the latest information on the pandemic.
• 6,000 subscriptions to the Allianz Care channel on the BrightTALK platform, which has been used to broadcast webinars on COVID-19. This is up from an average of 380 subscribers before the pandemic.
• Significant increase in demand for Allianz Care’s Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) with users looking for further information on financial advice as well as seeking counselling services and advice on stress management.
• 257% increase in calls made to Allianz Care’s 24/7 medical advice line which is staffed by an experienced medical team that can address queries in real-time, including general medical advice and information regarding self-care. To provide further support, a COVID-19 digital symptom checker was added to the service, which has already been used by more than 46,000 customers to date.

Commenting on this surge in demand, Allianz Care chief marketing officer for international health Paula Covey said, “It wasn’t a surprise that there’d be an increase in demand for support services and advice – whether through our EAP, 24/7 helpline, webinars or the website. However the scale of the demand did take us somewhat by surprise.”

Allianz Care, the international health brand of Allianz Partners, has provided ongoing support to members throughout the COVID-19 emergency, confirming that customers contracting the virus are covered by their healthcare policies.

It has also made temporary changes to its cover such as extending the period of cover for emergency medical treatment for those trapped outside their normal region of cover from six weeks to 21 weeks.

Source: Asia Insurance Review