We are not done yet, and I don't mean in the strategic sense, that there is plenty left to achieve, although that remains true. There is plenty more opportunity in financial services. I mean in this specific case: on the product quality rating for AIA's new range.
The new products have been reflected in the new QPR database, with the exception of the AIA Vitality programme. That needs to be addressed. This post is about explaining why it is not there yet, and giving you some indication of, at least, the state of the discussion that we are having about how to rate AIA Vitality in particular and health monitoring offers as a category. These are the issues and the current state of the debate:
- It's not insurance - true but within an insurance contract we rate a lot of features that are not, strictly, insurance
- It applies per life, not per policy - correct, which is why we are talking about treating it as a product, not as a feature under a product. This is one of the reasons we do not rate it yet, as we would need to code changes in the website to the way we show the package rating in order to show the product
- It costs more - which is also true, like any other product, if it is not already being paid for, then the cost for adding the product has to be shown in the quoted total for the package. Right now AIA has a special offer on where the charge is waived, so the cost is currently nil.
- There isn't anything else to compare it to - strictly speaking this isn't the case. Setting aside the interesting phone application the programme includes some medical screening benefits. We already rate those in several medical insurance products. Accuro also recently announced a kind of health monitoring service.
- It's all about getting a discount and you don't rate those - correct, we do not rate discounts. The discount is a substantial feature of the programme, which we give the option of applying in the product now, but there are benefits under the programme that are not related to the discount. The rating will be for them.
We have not finished the debate, but the current state of the discussion is around a rating for the product in the package report including the value of screening features and other benefits consistent with the value-based methodology.
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