August 2024
The acceleration of insurers offering online self-service portals for policy holders to stay on top of their insurance needs, access benefits and make claims when needed, is a move as inevitable (with the broad shift of society online) as it is welcomed (at least by those who embrace technology). We certainly see there are benefits to this from the policy holder protection perspective.
Insurance serves as a vital part of any personal financial plan. It helps underpinning resilience to the risk of the unexpected (health problems, accidents, property damage etc), assists to provide for dependents in the event of early demise of the main breadwinner in a family, and builds an element of wealth for the future to mitigate against the prospect of outliving one’s savings.
Insurance, then, is not just a one-off decision to buy but a dynamic aspect of any financial plan that needs to be reviewed regularly to ensure the policy coverage, terms and other conditions remain in step with a policy holder’s changing needs throughout his or her lifetime. Whether it is updating one’s correspondence address, ensuring one’s beneficiaries are properly recorded or simply recalling what coverages one has in place, having access to an online portal account serves to empower policy holders to keep on top of their insurance needs and ensure the subject of adequate insurance remains at the forefront of their minds.
Online portals also increasingly enable policy holders to submit claims or access other benefits under their policies. Often this is linked to increased speed of turnaround time by insurers, a matter always to be encouraged.
Another (sometimes uncommented on) benefit of online portals can be seen in some of our enforcement and complaint work. Policy holders through accessing their portals have quickly been able to identify problems which have arisen, enabling them to be surfaced and quickly reported and rectified. For example, situations where a policy holder has paid money onto an insurance agent, but the agent, for whatever reason, has not paid the money onto the insurer causing the coverage to be recorded as lapsed, can be quickly spotted. Indeed, the online portal offers a convenient channel to policy holders to make enquiries about the current status of their policies (and the insurer to address the matter with the agent and make reports to the Insurance Authority if necessary). Similarly, we have seen cases where an insurance agent purchased a policy for the policy holder (unbeknownst to the policy holder) for the purpose of meeting internal targets with the policy holder being alerted of this through accessing her online portal account (https://www.ia.org.hk/en/infocenter/press_releases/20240312.html).
Online portals, therefore, can be an important policy holder empowerment tool and serve as an example of the insurance sector’s commitment to using technology to provide transparency and continually build trust with those it serves. Policy holders can certainly use this to their advantage.