Insuring Cancer

Bringing sunshine into the lives of cancer patients

Can a cancer patient travel abroad for a holiday? Sadly, most travel insurance companies do not provide such cover and hence many such patients despite being clinically well, are not able to travel with any insurance coverage. Mr Praveen Gupta, CEO, Raheja QBE General Insurance Co Ltd, tells us that there is hope one insurer, InsureCancer, provides covers for those with active, metastatic or terminal cancers.

nclusivity is the buzzword in financial services today. Fetch the first timers into the safety network seems to be the priority. Those slipping out do not seem to be getting that high an importance. Getting them back into the fold is not a slogan, as yet. However, if one was to keenly look somewhere below the radar, you would be able to find socially and commercially fulfilling segments. Take for instance holidaymakers with a diagnosis of cancer. They are extremely frustrated to find that the travel insurance industry worldwide is unwilling to provide cover for their diagnosis this particularly the case if the cancer patient has active, metastatic or terminal cancer. Given the reluctance of insurers to offer cover and faced with repeated declines, many patients despite being clinically well are tragically being forced to give up any hope of ever travelling abroad again.
But there is hope!

With a significant proportion of the population exposed to cancer, InsureCancer demonstrates how an insurer can practise inclusivity. This also goes to show that there are potentially a lot of solutions out there that could be written profitably and ethically for a perceived minority customer base.
The challenges

Dr Krish Shastri is Director of the award winning specialist InsureCancer (www.InsureCancer.com), the UKs and perhaps the worlds only cancer insurance provider routinely providing cover to those with active, metastatic or terminal cancer.

The reluctance of insurers to offer cover is understandable and is driven by the fact that of all the medical conditions, deaths from cancer in the UK, outnumber deaths caused by heart disease, stroke, circulatory disease and respiratory disease combined. Cancer is the UKs biggest killer accounting for over a quarter of all deaths. To put this in perspective, an individual in the UK is fifty times more likely to die of cancer than a road traffic accident. With over 200 different types of cancer, it is also the most complex group of medical conditions, which is further compounded by the fact that two thirds of all cancers are diagnosed in the over 65s, ie those who are also more likely to have other medical complications associated with advancing age. Fortunately there have been many advances in the treatment of cancer, but efforts to underwrite cancer conditions are complicated by the fact that many of these therapies are experimental. This means that patients can very often suffer life threatening complications due to their therapy rather than to their cancer. In trying to provide cover for cancer patients, insurers in the past have, therefore, suffered from both a high claims frequency and very high claim costs, not only because of the diagnosis but also due to complications arising from the treatment. Keenly aware of these complexities and the disproportionate impact on their books, insurers will not offer cover for cancer.
Insurers generally willing to go only thus far

The very few UK insurers who may consider cancer cases do so using call centre based automated screening systems to simply select the survivors (those who have had cancer but have been off treatment for many months or years) and exclude the sufferers - those high risk individuals who have had a recent diagnosis of cancer, where it has spread (metastasised) to another part of the body or have a terminal diagnosis. In particular, the declaration of a terminal prognosis will render an individual uninsurable. Screening, therefore, excludes the large group of individuals who as sufferers are enduring the rigours of active,
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www.asiainsurancereview.com

December 2010

Insuring Cancer

Accolades for InsureCancer

InsureCancer was voted Insurer of the Year at the 2005 International Travel Insurance Conference in Seville, Spain. In April 2007, Queen Elizabeth II bestowed the countrys highest corporate honour on InsureCancer in recognition of pioneering insurance underwriting innovation for those affected by cancer. In 2009, InsureCancer was voted Personal Lines Initiative of the year at the UK Broker Awards.

the frequency of claims and thereby eliminating the consequent adverse impact on loss ratios, premiums are very realistic and affordable.
The coverage

metastatic or terminal cancer. Given the many different types of cancer each with the potential to spread to any other part of the body, there is clearly a multiplicity of disease permutations.
The InsureCancer difference

In view of these wide ranging complications, it is not surprising that insurers worldwide have not been able to develop underwriting mechanisms able to offer cover to cancer patients. InsureCancer however has evolved and successfully implemented a cancer underwriting methodology that is responsive to even the most complex of cancer cases. Their underwriting methodology is based on a keen understanding of the specific cancers disease trajectory and an integrated, fully correlated approach to the clinical, statistical and risk indicators. The underwriting process starts with a cognitive interview with the patient who is able to have a conversation with a specialist interviewer to outline his or her cancer history. With a deep understanding of the management and treatment of cancer, it is possible for the interviewer to clarify key aspects of the declaration during the course of the conversation, eliminating the possibility of any misunderstanding. The patients attending clinicians are also given the opportunity of offering their perspectives of the patients treatment and stability. Every case is then individually underwritten using the InsureCancer methodology.
Focus on fitness to travel

Confident in their ability to effectively underwrite cases, InsureCancer policies offer worldwide travel insurance cover that includes full medical and repatriation cover up to 5 million (US$7.87 million) for any complications arising from the patients diagnosis of cancer. This means that if the patient is hospitalised whilst on holiday, the policy will pay all medical costs and repatriate the patient under the terms of the policy. Many of the insurers patients travel to far flung destinations to see their children and grandchildren for the last time. For some, it may be the need to fulfil a lifelong ambition. However, they all recognise that medical complications abroad can be financially devastating and very few will risk travelling uninsured. The emergence of a case responsive cancer underwriting methodology has made it possible to successfully offer cover at realistic cost to patients at any stage of their cancer journey. InsureCancer works closely with a number of mainstream travel insurers who at the point of decline simply alert cancer patients to the possibility of contacting InsureCancer. Many mainstream insurers have indeed recognised their ethical and moral responsibility. They are now referring their declined cancer applications to InsureCancer, thus doing their best to help and make a meaningful contribution to this very deserving but hitherto neglected segment of the community.
Learn to look beyond

Working together, we can and do bring some sunshine into the lives of cancer patients, says Dr Shastri. Given the lifestyles, ageing populace and turbulent economies, there is lot to learn from this example in our part of the world. Empathy and profitability can go hand in hand, if only we are willing to look beyond.

As the focus of the methodology is on clinical fitness to travel, a terminal prognosis is irrelevant and plays no part in their underwriting process. From a patients point of view, a major advantage of the approach is that the underwriting is carried out at the point of application, and therefore their cancer patients have the benefit of certainty of cover before embarking on perhaps the last trip of a lifetime. Uniquely able to offer cover to patients at any stage of their cancer journey, InsureCancers underwriting methodology is also responsive to those patients in the midst of their treatment such as chemo or radiotherapy. The methodology has been shown to accurately identify those cases most likely to have complications. By markedly reducing
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