Sustainability in the face of the innovations in the insurtech and healthtech fronts were the focus of a roundtable discussion organized by Digital Pilipinas, which is reputedly to be the largest private sector-led technology movement in the country.
The roundtable was attended by industry leaders and key stakeholders in the insurance and health spaces led by the Philippine Insurers and Reinsurers Association (PIRA), the Philippine Life Insurance Association (PLIA), and the Philippine Insurtech and Healthtech Association (PIHAI.)
Rico Bautista, PLIA president and Etiqa Philippines president and CEO, shared insights on the company’s innovative technological solutions and its commitment to serve customers well through various digital touchpoints.
“We need to be able to provide excellent customer experience. What we have done is even before the pandemic hit, we were already developing our app-based solutions,” Bautista said.
“Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is something that all of us should be pursuing. Digitalization and being part of Digital Pilipinas and being part of the Healthtech and Insurtech associations allow us to push forward that ESG concept and initiative that we all should be having. We want to be at the forefront of this because we are serious about sustainability and ESG,” he added.
George Mina, PLIA GM and Data Protection Officer discussed the significant changes in the insurance industry in the sphere of digitalization. “The most significant is being able to sell life insurance on a digital basis. It used to be a face-to-face thing. If you look at the websites of life insurance companies, they’re getting more and more personalized (in terms of) branding of digital assistance.”
Hyper-personalized digital banking solutions provider Inypay Founder and CEO Arivuvel Ramu talked about the insurance onboarding platform and the potential for InsurTech growth.
“If you look at Insurtech on a global scale, it’s a $83 billio market share as of 2022. By 2028, the prediction for micro-insurance alone is $118 billion global market share. Out of that, if you look at Southeast Asia alone, as of 2022, it’s a $3 billion worth of market and by 2028, the potential market to grow is by $8.4 billion just for the microfinance sector alone,” Ramu said.
Gary Dujali, Metro Pacific Health Tech mWell chief marketing and commercial Officer, shared the company’s initiatives to support the growing healthtech industry of the country as a fully integrated and fully digital health and wellness platform.
He said, “This is a fully integrated app experience. We’re in that space where we need to digitalize and bridge the digital divide. This app is that. From the time you select a doctor, all the way towards buying your medicine, and delivered straight to your house.”
The event also served as a venue to discuss the initial research findings of “The Voice of Digital Pilipinas”, a collaborative undertaking by Digital Pilipinas, Global Fintech Institute, and Tangere that aims to give a democratic voice to Filipinos.
Focusing on cybersecurity and data privacy, the first research revealed that government agencies are the most trusted application platform in terms of mobile applications.
“This serves as an opportunity for the Philippine government. The trust factor is really high, with 3/5 Filipinos preferring government agency applications. This is followed distantly by applications from e-wallets and bank applications,” Martin Penaflor, Tangere CEO, said.
Digital Pilipinas convenor Amor Maclang emphasized the need to support local players in the insurtech and healthtech sectors of the country, which are also two of the very important work streams of Digital Pilipinas.
“Health and insurance are two very important aspects of our work. We will be having a series of programs for both HealthTech and InsurTech and grow these industries domestically. We are working on a possible execution of smart contracts and blockchain in the insurance space,” Maclang said.
“There will be a pitch fest and a hackathon because we realize that many of the InsurTech players are foreign. We hope to encourage many InsurTech founders coming from the Philippines and coming from ASEAN to join the pitch fest and hackathon and be part of the Digital Pilipinas Festival x Philippine FinTech Festival happening in November.”
Insurtech and healthtech are two of the key industries that will be given focus on at the upcoming Digital Pilipinas Festival x Philippine FinTech Festival happening on November 21-24, 2023, at SMX Aura and in various co-located venues and innovation hubs across the country.
To register for the festival, please visit https://digitalpilipinas.ph.
