Health insurance company nib Group is going all out when it comes to data, as the business charges ahead towards its goal of being a true-blue healthcare partner – instead of just a pure-play insurer – for its customers.
Currently, the Newcastle-based business is looking for a data engineer, senior data warehouse engineer, product manager for data platforms, and software developer. The new positions will be part of nib’s emerging technology and data platforms team, which is helping the insurer in its transition to a fully digital member experience.
Speaking with Insurance Business, nib chief information officer Brendan Mills (pictured) noted: “We’ve focussed quite heavily over the last little while and continue to do so – which is what we’re doing here with these roles – on building stronger and deeper capabilities across the business around machine learning, data science, and the like.
“It’s a real focus on data and making sure that data is seen as a first-class citizen, and that we use data to be better able to predict and inform our members’ healthcare and well-being needs. So, that’s the overarching driver. And, within the business, we’re also looking at where else we can use data engineering and machine learning capabilities across sales and marketing, retention, and claims processing.”
In fact, nib is presently doing some work in the area of claims processing around using machine learning. Essentially, the capability being built group-wide is aimed at serving the insurer fairly well not only in being able to improve the member experience, but also in reducing nib’s cost base in time.
While there’s a lot of work ahead, the whole prospect surrounding the payer-to-partner transition is leaving the chief information officer stoked.
“To really move closer to our members’ healthcare needs and to be able to apply data insights – be it through traditional data engineering or through more contemporary methods around data science and machine learning – is definitely the most exciting opportunity we have, I think, as a business,” said Mills.
The challenge, though, is debunking people’s perceptions around the use of data.
The nib executive explained: “Sometimes there’s a view that with data we will increase someone’s premium or we will deny the cover or whatever. In our situation, because of the regulations we operate in, that’s actually impossible to do. We can’t charge someone a different premium or deny them cover; we have a mechanism called community rating, which prevents us from doing that.”
“What we’re really trying to do is make sure that as someone’s health partner, we really look at how we leverage the data to better serve them,” stressed Mills, “be that through using data to identify claims patterns that might ultimately allow us to offer them a health management programme or be that prediction of future episodes of care that they might need.
“There’s no doubt that with the right harvesting and engineering of data, we’ll be able to get closer and closer to our customers and better meet their needs, which I think is a pretty exciting proposition.”
What’s crucial, he said, is getting that careful balance between people sharing data and people being more willing to give data in exchange for value.
“As consumers, we’re quite often prepared to share our data in exchange for something,” the chief information officer went on to illustrate. “So, we share our data with Facebook in exchange for some sort of social media experience and connectivity with friends and family, and advertising or posting.
“I think for us it’s about creating the right opportunities, the right products and services, the right platforms for people to then want to engage with us, to share their data with us, to then give them that value back.”
Mills believes what’s important is creating that right value exchange and being able to demonstrate, through real-world use cases, that the products and services are indeed valuable to the consumer.
He told Insurance Business: “I think that’s really where our opportunity and challenge lies, is that once we nail that and get that right, we’ll have a far more open dialogue. We’ve got some good programmes in place already, and we’ve started to work closely with a lot of our customers around health management programmes.
“We’ve set up a joint venture, in addition to the main part of the business, which is focussed on delivery of a lot of these clinical services. So, we’re well on the way, but we have a lot of work to do yet.”
If you ask Mills, though, he’ll say that the work actually never stops.
“I don’t feel like you ever start and stop with these things,” he asserted. “The way I like to think about our investment in technology and business process reengineering, and the experiences we’re trying to create, is that it’s pretty much a continual evolution of what we’re offering.
“I wouldn’t like to put a timeline on it per se, because I just don’t believe you’re ever finished. As we get more and more feedback from our members and our customers, we’ll adapt and pivot and align the experience to the feedback we’re getting along the way.”
