Consumers have “trust deficit” on health information.

By Lachlan Colquhoun

Building consumer trust in allowing medical information, particularly in the areas of genetics and mental health, to be accessed by insurers is one of the key challenges for the future, according to two members of a Parliamentary Committee on the industry.

Senator Deborah O’Neill, the Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services and fellow committee member Jason Falinksi, MP, were interviewed in a Plenary session at the FSC 2018 Life Insurance Conference in Sydney.

The two said the committee report on the life insurance industry, due for release in the next month, was expected to be unanimous and would be a “call to action” for the industry going forward.

“It calls for ethical action from players who want to be a part of a long term industry with slow and patient capital,” said Senator O’Neill.

“Affordable, accessible and reliable insurance provides part of the protective web which underlines our democracy.”

She said she believed such an approach would be a “differentiator” and forecast ”the industry’s best will take up this opportunity.”

Senator O’Neill’s two main concerns were around genetic information and mental health, and the fact that many people were reluctant to give this information to insurers for fear that it would negatively affect their insurance.

The insurance industry was “right on the cusp of incredible change because of interaction with a rapidly changing medical world,” but there was a “trust deficit” between insurers and consumers.

“Consumers and doctors and insurers should be vital partners in creating a safe and ethical way to manage a complex claim,” she said.

Jason Falinski said one of the main themes which had come through in the committee was the complexity of the industry.

On the medical side, there were complexities around diagnosis and treatment coupled with advances in medicine and health.

This was combined with a difficulty to differentiate between insurance products which had created an “asymmetric” situation, where the industry was providing products it understood, but were not understood by consumers.

“Even some of the experts we have had come to the committee have found it hard to discern differences between products, so it is not surprising there has been controversy,” Falinksi said.

“There have been some practices and players that have taken advantage of that complexity to the detriment of consumers.”