Online interviewing to be tested by Medicals Direct

New initiatives to be undertaken in new year

Medicals Direct has announced it will experiment with online interviewing for protection products and has revealed a series of initiatives for the new year.

The insurance processes outsourcer, which introduced online scheduling for the arrangement of tele underwriting interviews in late December, will begin online interviews in the first quarter.

Mike Benton said: “This is very much an experiment. Currently a call takes 20 minutes and we expect that online would take longer, so we may change some questions. The question we want to answer is; can we get the same quality of underwriting information without the phone call?

“The voice aspect does not really make a difference, as, unlike some, we do not use lie detection software. This experiment would not work if we relied on that. We will be picking a client, carrying out 1,000 interviews online, and then assessing the information gathered. The answer will all be in the numbers.”

Medicals Direct is also launching a new service to insurers; InfiniT. This is a full service bundle, aimed primarily at the smaller insurers looking to outsource their underwriting, medical evidence gathering and claims handling to a third party.

Neil Armitage, marketing director at Foresters Friendly Society, commented: “Firms only outsource non core business. Insurers will ask if they are marketers and designers of new business or administrators of a book of business. It can be looked at in the same way as outsourcing IT. Claims handling may be a sticking point but medical evidence gathering looks interesting.”

The firm is also intending to move its services, based on the British model, into Europe. “France and Spain are going to be very busy for us and the Reinsurers we partner with in Europe have identified Portugal as a likely large market for our services,” said Benton.