According to Michael Serbinis, CEO and founder of digital health benefits company League, the insurance world is lagging behind the times. It’s slow, relies too much on paper, and is not customer-centric. And League aims to change that.
“The existing guys are still growing and still doing well from a profitability standpoint,” Serbinis said in an interview with DX Journal. “They see any kind of new tech as cute or novel, but not something you talk about at a board meeting, or something that’s going change the effect of the quarter or year.
The lack of major innovation in both process and technology is something legacy insurance providers are no doubt keenly aware of and focused on.
A report from McKinsey details that younger, digitally-native consumers are turning to insurtech companies out of a desire for convenience and a love of mobile technology. Insurtech’s early adoption of technology such as IoT and blockchain puts them ahead of their entrenched insurance rivals, states the McKinsey report — and not just when it comes to a customer interface, but when it comes to “venturing into untapped markets and addressing unmet needs.”
It’s not just customers that have been responsive to the insurtech approach to insurance services. By some estimates, nearly half (48%) of all SMEs will look to digital insurance options over conventional providers within the next four years. Furthermore, a report from PwC, has recommended that every major insurance provider prepare for the future of healthcare where customer-centric tools that are personalized and easy-to-use are tablestakes.
“When insurance companies start to pay attention, usually what they do is very surface,” said Serbinis. “In the world of health insurance, that tends to mean better websites and a new app, to use your existing structure of a health insurance plan.”
Enter League
Serbinis, a self-described rocket scientist turned entrepreneur, founded League in 2014 after watching how much trouble people had trying to access benefits. Generally speaking, things keep getting more expensive with no additional value offered, and often a cumbersome or antiquated user experience.
A serial entrepreneur, Serbinis holds a steady series of startup success stories under his belt; from his early work with the Musk brothers in California, to his building up of web-based file storage company DocSpace, to co-founding the massive e-reader company Kobo.
While League started out as a portal for benefits users and health vendors, League now offers businesses a versatile selection of insurance options.
The company strives to offer layers of flexibility; employers can choose from traditional group plans and health spending accounts, or lifestyle spending accounts that include a variety of therapy choices not usually found in conventional plans. On top of the offering, the company gives employers a suite of administrative tools to makes the process paperless, automated and easy to navigate.
“This is an industry that’s filled with paper-based processes. And processes that involve a lot of humans,” said Serbinis. “By our very nature, we’re an end-to-end digital benefits platform that connects not only all the financial services providers – the insurance companies, the retirement companies, the enterprise and their HR system, their payroll system — but most importantly, the end consumer, the end employee, that’s got the League app on their phone and can avoid having to deal with the same paper and frustration and delay.”
League’s insurance offering is delivered via a digital wallet where employees can coordinate health appointments and services from more than 1,000 health vendors within the app itself. Digital records and claims are managed by League so employees can skip the paperwork.
“We have become the end-to-end digital platform for offering all benefits and health insurance to employees,” said Serbinis. “We replace the plastic cards, paper and booklets (given out to employees) with a unified wallet that has all your coverage and benefits in one place. And then a bunch of services around it to help you get the most out of your benefits — to get the services you need better, faster, cheaper.”
The newest addition to League’s set of tools is something the company calls Health Concierge — a chatbot interface that lets employees contact a registered nurse through the app.
A personalized evolution
The biggest evolution at League came when the company shifted away from simply coordinating consumer health vendors with insurance groups, to then taking on the full responsibilities of an insurance provider. It was a pivotal and long-lasting decision, says Serbinis — and it’s one that he believes puts League ahead of other Canadian benefits providers.
Transitioning from a health vendor marketplace to a provider of every level of the insurance process allows League to implement its technological innovations — like the Health Concierge — and scale them to benefit the entire insurance process, for both employers and employees.
“The customer-centric approach is largely about empowering people to live their best lives,” said Serbinis. “The way to do that is not only putting lipstick on a pig in terms of a better website, but it’s fundamentally about giving that end-user more choice and freedom and leveraging data to make great recommendations and provide a personalized experience. I think a lot of people are missing the boat on that.”
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