For most of us, the past two years have been sort of a reset and a period of re-assessment. In the case of travel insurer Allianz Partners New Zealand, the time of COVID has been an opportunity to explore what else it can offer the local market.
“The first thing we did [when the pandemic hit] is probably what a lot of insurers did – we worked on the business,” chief executive Kevin Blyth (pictured) told Insurance Business. “We looked at our product, we looked at our pricing, we looked at our systems, and we worked on all of them.
“The other thing is, because we’re Allianz Partners, while it’s mainly travel that we do in New Zealand, Allianz Partners globally is much more of an assistance company, so there’s a whole lot of things that [the group does].”
He continued: “What we did was we talked to our partners about some of the opportunities that we had and things that we could do with them, and areas where we thought we could help them to increase their reach-out to their customers.”
Essentially, it was a case of ‘What other things can we do while travel is limited,’ and Allianz Partners NZ found its way towards the wellness realm, with the insurance company set to launch its digital health service (DHS) on July 18.
“One of the things that [DHS] does for us is it provides our customers and business partners with immediate direct access to [five] key things,” said Blyth. “Of those key things, one is an AI-based (artificial intelligence) symptom checker; the second is medical advice where they can chat with doctors.”
Other components of the health assistant include a round-the-clock healthline, a mental wellbeing feature, and a health services directory. Teleconsultation, meanwhile, will be made available later this year.
“They can have a video consultation with doctors, if it requires that, and then they can actually have prescriptions delivered to them,” highlighted the CEO. “We started that with a view of doing it with the international students that we have coming into New Zealand, but it’s something that we’ll roll out much more widely out there.
“So, it’s those sorts of things that we looked at – not just travel insurance-related but doing some of the things that Allianz Partners does globally, and taking some of that global reach that we’ve got and some of those things that we can take to market that add value.”
In the process, noted Blyth, several important questions had needed to be asked.
He pointed out: “What do we see as valuable? What do we think will help customers? What do we think will help partners? And then focussing on those things. There’s a whole lot of things that we could have done, but we’ve tried to focus on where we think we can add value.
“To do that, we had to have an awful lot of discussions with our partners – ‘Look, here’s some things that we do overseas; would this be something that you’d see value in,’ and talk them through it. I think there’ll be more that will come out of that in the future, but you don’t want to try and launch everything at once; you want to focus.”
The mental wellbeing feature, which is now integrated within the wider telehealth platform that is being introduced, has been in the market since late last year. It was user-tested with The University of Auckland in what Allianz Partners NZ described as a “huge” success.
“Mental health is a really big thing not just in New Zealand but globally,” Blyth told Insurance Business. “That was a really cool area for us to focus on and say, ‘We think we can add value in that space with our partners’.”
A comprehensive tool, the Allianz DHS is aimed at addressing the growing demand for digital health services, all while adding value and helping improve people’s lives. The direct access to a range of health services and medical professionals is designed to make it easier to effectively and efficiently look after one’s health and wellbeing.
The strategic vision, said the insurer, is to help individuals overcome health problems before they become chronic, acute issues by way of proactive treatment that targets the cause instead of the consequence. In Allianz Partners’ view, using the platform also has the potential to ease the burden on the country’s healthcare system.
