Health insurers investigating imarket e-trading options

The Association of Medical Insurance and health insurers are looking at ways of improving e-trading across the private medical insurance market. A meeting in Reading in September, between brokers, the AMI, Polaris UK and private medical insurers investigated ways in which they could work together to agree common standards.

Alistair Sclare, head of healthcare underwriting at Groupama Healthcare, told Professional Broking: "The healthcare insurance market is efficient on the claims end but inefficient on the policy end. We deal with paper, fax machines and the telephone. It is document intensive and there is a lot of paper.

Bupa, AXA, HSA and Legal and General were involved in the meeting, while Norwich Union and Standard Life pulled out at the last minute. 60% of attendees were intermediaries. Sclare said: "The increasing strength of the AMI is because of larger brokers becoming involved. The AMI is trying to learn from the British Insurance Brokers' Association."

Polaris UK is undertaking a feasibility study into how private medical insurance could be incorporated onto imarket and is expected to report back at the end of the first quarter in 2007.

Commenting on behalf of AMI, Phil Taylor of Preferred Medical, said: "There was a meeting of minds on the need for some co-ordinated solution and an acceptance that the market could really benefit from the efficiencies and lower costs that an electronic market initiative might offer." Taylor added: "We are at the beginning of a pretty long road."