LIFE & HEALTH INSURANCE: HEALTH Could data gathered via more digitally engaged insurers have flagged the impending COVID crisis sooner? Peter Ohnemus, founder of B2B insurtech Dacadoo, believes so, which is why redesigning the industry’s approach will do both it, and society, a massive service If the pandemic has forced governments to prioritise public health over public wealth, that’s not because the two are in opposition. Wealth and health have always been two sides of the same coin, but it’s taken a rampant virus to expose just how codependent these broad indicators of a well-functioning society truly are. Nothing is black and white, and two key
features of this vpandemic graphically illustrate that. Lockdowns are a choice between excess COVID-19 deaths now and the excess deaths known to accompany a recession, which a lockdown will likely cause. Meanwhile, an element of remote working has been embraced by some companies, even as restrictions ease, in acknowledgement of the fact that a healthy and happy workforce at home generates more wealth than a stressed one in the office. For an industry straddling health and wealth, insurance has traditionally offered a safety net rather than trapeze training for balancing the two. Your health insurer steps in when you’re sick, but is absent when you’re making decisions that affect your health. And life insurance kicks in when it’s already too late to make a lifestyle intervention that might prolong your existence. As the founder, chairman, president and CEO of B2B insurtech Dacadoo, you could
say Peter Ohnemus is consumed with addressing this distinctly inefficient system. The premise upon which Dacadoo is based is simple enough: if insurers take a more active role in the lives of their customers, encouraging healthier lifestyles, they save on claims while the consumer improves their health and their wealth (through discounted premiums) – and there’s that warm glow generated from knowing their insurer is actually invested in their wellbeing. Dacadoo is Ohnemus’ latest venture, but potentially the one that will leave his most impactful legacy. A serial entrepreneur, he sold his previous business, a sustainability rating firm called Asset4, to Thomson Reuters in 2009. A year later, he turned his attention to the intersection of health and wealth. “My previous business gave me the idea,” he says. “If you can carry out a sustainability rating of a company – looking at things like water and energy use – then you can rate the sustainability of a human life.”
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TheInsurtechMagazine | Issue 6
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