How shifts in health care are affecting Canada’s life and health insurers

Deloitte’s latest Life and Health Insurance POV explores how imminent shifts in the health-care system will vastly alter the group benefits landscape—compelling Canadian insurers to prepare for the coming changes.

Canada’s health-care model sits on the cusp of a major transformation from the provision of standardized services towards an era of personalization. Underpinning this transition is the adoption of new technologies, online offerings, and pharmacological breakthroughs that are laying the foundation for predictive diagnostics and preventative care.

While this brings unprecedented opportunity for Canada’s group benefits providers, obstacles may prevent insurers from fully leveraging the growing stores of individualized health data. To help organizations prepare, this paper sets out four plausible scenarios for the future.

Here’s a breakdown of what the POV covers:

• The move toward personalized health care: The paper explores four key changes in the health-care landscape that may affect group benefits providers: the expansion of non-traditional care options, the prevalence of genealogy testing, the rise of precision medicines, and the move towards data-driven health care.
• How group benefits providers are affected: As the shift towards personalized health care accelerates, the POV notes that Canada’s group plan providers will be able to deliver increasingly enhanced digital experiences—but only if they can overcome potential roadblocks.
• Imagining possible futures: To help group benefits providers weather industry uncertainty, Deloitte conducted research to arrive at four plausible scenarios for the future.

           Scenario 1: Wellness marketplace

With a focus on flexibility, plan designs use fitness tracking and behavioural data to drive relationships between plan members and wellness and lifestyle brands.

           Scenario 2: Data utopia

Governments welcome private industry into health care delivery as data is openly shared, while sophisticated analytics capabilities allow carriers to provide cutting-edge offerings.

           Scenario 3: Low-cost landscape

Industry consolidation accelerates as carriers invest heavily in technology and automation. As plan cost becomes the focus, innovation is stifled.

           Scenario 4: Health-care curation

In a data-rich world, governments and private entrants collaborate to improve public health, and carriers become curators of health-care services.

To help group benefits providers respond, this paper also sets out several recommendations insurers can follow to secure a competitive advantage—regardless of what the future holds.

Read the paper to discover how group benefits carriers can prepare for an uncertain tomorrow.

Contacts

James Colaço
Partner, National Insurance Sector Leader
jacolaco@deloitte.ca
416-874-3152

Derek Last
Senior Consultant, Consulting
delast@deloitte.ca
416-867-8152