The 2024 Singapore Actuarial Conference, themed 'Creating Resilient Actuaries for Tomorrow' explored the challenges and opportunities for actuaries in the insurance industry. This includes developing products and services to meet the needs of individuals, businesses and governments, discussions around sustainability in medical insurance, the use of AI in healthcare and health insurance and the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.
“When we talk about medical sustainability, we are witnessing the market failure of private medical insurance, unless we do something dramatic about it in the next ten years,” said Life Insurance Association Malaysia CEO Mark O’Dell.
“One of the biggest issues is the la carte pricing of a private hospital. Every little procedure your body consumes is itemized. Hospital services make up 75-80% of the hospital bill, which is tremendously high,” he said.
Prudential plc CEO for health Arjan Toor double clicked on Mr O’Dell’s point in speaking about measuring health outcomes.
“We have a collective responsibility to address and solve the equation of a more sustainable health care system. It might be difficult as health is personal, there are many determinants of health that are not within the gift of the health care provider but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to develop some commonality and some standardisation of the way in which we measure health outcomes,” Mr Toor said.
“The only way we can start to align incentives and make sure that we all move in a similar direction towards a more sustainable health care system is when we [insurers, regulators and providers] collectively put our weight behind it," he said.
When asked to elaborate on how to get insurers, regulators and providers in the same room to work through issues and develop solutions to existing problems, Ministry of Health (MOH) Singapore director for finance partnerships and governance Sarah Leong quoted a multilateral healthcare insurance committee, hosted by MOH, that gathered stakeholders to discuss cross-cutting issues.
“Some of the challenges mentioned during the committee meetings were indeed tension-causing. Where there is tension, there is possibility for growth. Some of the difficult questions about fee transparency benchmarks and access to care were solved at this meeting,” Ms Leong said.
Mr O’Dell said government intervention is vital.
“Someone to set the rules, someone with authority, is what we need to bring everyone together and address issues. It will take government intervention to steer the ship,” he said.
The Singapore Actuarial Conference 2024 runs from 26 to 29 August in Singapore, with Asia Insurance Review as the official media partner.