Inter Group Medicover Case Study

Medicover was originally developed jointly by Healix and Inter Group in 1997 and was designed to provide travel insurance for people with pre-existing medical conditions who couldn’t get cover under traditional travel insurance policies.  The concept was that almost all medical risks could be covered provided the appropriate premium could be calculated.

Healix were heavily involved in the product design and underwriting and provided the necessary medical risk assessment tools and back-up which allowed risks to be understood and assessed as part of the call centre and on-line sales processes.  The idea of individual underwriting was extended to incorporate narrower age bands, countries rather than regions and actual trip lengths rather than duration bands.  All this allowed a more accurate overall reflection of actual risk.

Because of the previously untried nature of the scheme, Inter Group put together a panel of underwriters to share the risk and they also referred to the scheme, applicants who had failed the medical criteria on other policies.  The scheme started small with early experience used to adjust rates and fine-tune scores with the result that it developed into a consistently profitable scheme for the insurers behind it.