Specialist insurer Cover-More Group has acquired a majority stake in FitSense, a data analytics company which enables insurers to customise their products through the use of health and fitness data from mobile apps and connected devices.
FitSense, a spin-off enterprise from the National University of Singapore (NUS), gathers data on users' physical activity from health and fitness apps, such as smart watches and mobile phones, to generate an activity score, which can be used to predict the user's health and fitness level – and subsequently, insurance risk and commensurate premium.
“Cover-More continues to look for ways to proactively transform our business for our customers, to focus on them as individuals and deliver products that reflect their individuality,” said Mike Emmett, Cover-More Group CEO.
“And FitSense’s technology enables us to deliver highly customised and highly optimised insurance solutions in real time.”
FitSense would operate as a stand-alone entity within the group and would work with other insurers when it made commercial sense to do so, Emmett said.
Jan-Philipp Kruip, co-founder and CEO of FitSense, said the technology has broad application across all forms of insurance.
“When it comes to medical insurance, people have to pay higher premiums if they had a family history of a chronic disease,” Kruip said. “However, those who have made healthier lifestyle choices and exercise regularly are not able to benefit from lower premiums. That inequity was our starting point for FitSense. Almost everyone has the option to make healthier lifestyle choices.
We wanted to find a way to assess a customer’s health status without the customer answering any additional questions or completing a questionnaire or some other type of assessment.”
FitSense is relocating their headquarters from Singapore to Sydney.
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