The Generali group is launching insurance in Germany with flexible rates depending on behavior. The French market is the next target.
Health insurance that modulates its coverage according to your more or less virtuous behavior? If the idea makes many French people wince, unfamiliar with this type of model, it is starting to develop in Europe.
Proof of this is the launch on the German market, this Friday 1er July, of “behavior insurance” by the Italian group Generali. Called “Vitality”, the contract provides preferential rates to customers who take care of their health, through personalized programs and tailor-made monitoring.
Organic shopping, fitness …
In fact, it is very easy to measure the efforts made in favor of one’s own health. The cash register receipts from organic supermarkets, preventive medical visits or registrations to fitness rooms, are all proof of good health will. “Vitality” thus offers reductions on insurance premiums ranging from 11 to 16% for those who show these supporting documents.
But the insurer goes even further. Through an Android app, customers will be able to transmit very precise health data on the number of steps they take each day, or on their blood pressure.
Generali ensures that health data will not be accessible to it; an intermediary company would collect them and then process them, before giving a note to the customer (bronze, silver or gold), then sent to the insurer.
“The separation between the insurer and the data is therefore well defined”, promises Generali … which one can however doubt. The intermediary company is called “Generali Vitality GmbH” and it belongs to the group. It is difficult, under these conditions, to guarantee total independence.
“It’s not democratic”
Beyond the security that surrounds health data, it is the very principle of this behavioral insurance that is worrying. In the Geneva tribune, German consumer associations ask: “The essential question is whether we agree to privatize our health policies. Is it up to insurers to dictate our behavior, to say what to eat, do or smoke? It is not democratic ”. Voices are raised against a bonus system which would inevitably involve a penalty system …
In the world of insurance, the debate rages on. While most complementary health providers do not officially want to hear about this flexible care, in fact, all have started to think about it. Moreover, “Vitality” will be deployed in September, “but the system will be completely different”, provides the communication service of Generali France.
French brakes
In fact, neither the regulatory framework of the Hexagon, nor the philosophy which underlies the assumption of responsibility for care, does not allow to set up such insurance on the territory. “It will in fact be a well-being program, a kind of coaching offered to company employees as part of the supplement, but quite distinct from the insurance contract,” says Generali. In fact, in France, insurers do not target individuals but companies.
Could behavior insurance, despite all these administrative, regulatory and psychological brakes, emerge in the country? “The question does not arise, since the French model is based on mutualism”, underlines the communication from Generali. With this model, healthy people contribute for sick patients, like pensions funded by assets. But for how long ?
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