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How to get a wellness discount on health insurance

How to get a wellness discount on health insurance

Chetan and his wife recently got a 100% return of premium on their family floater health policy. And it was not much of an effort either. All they did was complete 10,000 steps a day for over 300 days in a year. Launched in 2021, Aditya Birla’s Activ Health Platinum Enhanced Program waives the entire premium at the time of renewal if you maintain your fitness. Chetan is among those 1,000 policyholders, who have got their full premium back against their health score. A total of 10.87 lakh members have generated their well-being score under this policy, says Mayank Bathwal, chief executive officer at Aditya Birla Health Insurance. “I bought the family floater policy at a premium of ₹14,600. My wife and I crossed the number of active days that the company required for us to get eligible for 100% discount. The company’s app would showcase how many points we have collected so far. It motivated us to continue our health journey. I renewed my policy in July with the health returns that we had collected,” says Chetan.   MintView Full ImageMint How to measure active days? One active day is equal to 10,000 steps or 300 calories burned or a 30-minute gym session per day. One needs to hit 13 active days every month to gain 100% health returns. “If you are into yoga or swimming that cannot be measured on the app, you can take a fitness assessment test every six months. in such cases, policyholders can either visit our centres or get it done at home,” says Bathwal. While wellness benefits are part of most insurance policies, Aditya Birla claims to be the only insurer in the world offering 100% discount on renewal of premium. Insurance companies such as ICICI Lombard Health Insurance, Bajaj Allianz Health Insurance and Star Health and Allied Insurance offer limited discounts that vary in different policies. In the case of Bajaj Allianz, it is 12.5%, subject to the fulfilment of all the criteria, For Star Health, it is up to 10%. ICICI Lombard recently launched a new OPD (outpatient) and Wellness rider, ‘BeFit’, in which it offers up to 25% discount on the basic renewal premium. “We have seen about 10% of customers who have availed of the wellness benefit discount during policy renewal,” says Bhaskar Nerurkar, Head – Health Administration Team, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance. Data from Policybazaar shows over 30% of people have renewed their policies through wellness points in Q1 FY23, compared to 20% during the same period last year. Aditya Birla Active Health, Aditya Birla Active Assure Diamond, Niva Bupa ReAssure, Star Comprehensive, Star Health Young Star, Care Plus, and Manipal Cigna Prime are among the most popular wellness renewals in that order.
Senior citizens The premium on senior citizen policies is too high. If they maintain good health, they too are eligible for such discounts. Take the case of 68-year-old Veena Pradhan, who pays ₹31,000 as annual premium on her health insurance policy. She is into yoga and completes her share of step-count. She, too, received 100% premium back minus GST. “We understand that 10,000 steps are strenuous for senior citizens, so we have reduced it to 7,500 for them,” says Bathwal. Bajaj Allianz Health Insurance has plans to launch more customer-centric products for targeted groups like senior citizens, young women, and children. For example, wellness features for senior citizens may include fall detection, emergency care, health tracking monitoring and concierge services, etc. In fact, discounts on renewal premiums are just one part of wellness programs. There are multiple other benefits. For example, one can buy medicines and other health-related products or can pay for diagnostic tests from insurer’s service partners with the health points collected. Besides, policyholders get access to doctor consultation and health coaches for free. If customers follow the advice, it adds up to their well-being score. Innovation on the way South African health insurer Discovery Health has pioneered in the field of wellness benefits. Its decades-old comprehensive incentive-based wellness program Discovery Vitality not just offers health-related rewards but also retail, airline, travel discounts and more. The wellness score improves if you shop for healthy food. A similar model is expected in the country to incentivise healthy lifestyles. Aditya Birla has already tied up with seven lifestyle partners such as Amazon, Uber and Samsung. Policyholders can convert their health score into reward points when interacting with them. Another big innovation in wellness could be about how and what you eat. “Customers are willing to share their lifestyle. If they post pictures of their breakfast, lunches and dinners, there are technological tools that can help assess if the food is nutritional. Those who maintain healthy food habits will get incentives. We have it in our roadmap for our health insurance products,” says Sanjeev S, chief business officer, ACKO General Insurance. One needs to be aware of cybersecurity concerns though. “Companies thrive on data. While they may incentivize people who stay fit, based on the data collected, it is worth noting that even companies with robust systems can get hacked. So, share only those things that are necessary. If a health insurance app wants to track your heart rate or calories, it makes sense, but you should deny the permission if it wants access to your photos/gallery or microphone,” says Mandeep Gill, co-founder, Labour Law Advisor. People are increasingly driven towards a healthy lifestyle. Wellness discounts will not just help in better insurance penetration but also result in fewer claims. It’s a win-win situation for both, the policyholders and insurers.

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The “only AI-powered 24/7 mental health solution” raises $20M

The “only AI-powered 24/7 mental health solution” raises $20M


One in eight people in the world have a mental health disorder, according to the World Health Organization, but high treatment costs and a shortage of healthcare professionals make it difficult for people to seek help.
Wysa, a company founded in 2015 that provides AI-driven mental health support through an app, is trying to circumvent the traditional mental health landscape entirely by giving consumers the power to access support directly at any time of the day, said Ramakant Vempati, cofounder of Wysa.
Last week, the company, located in Boston, London and Bengaluru, India, secured $20 million in series B funding from HealthQuad and British International Investment. Including this investment, Wysa has raised a total of $29.4 million. Other investors in the company are W Health Ventures, Kae Capital, pi Ventures and Google Assistant Investments.
The money will be used to help expand Wysa’s reach in the U.S., United Kingdom and India across enterprises, payers and providers, and grow its workforce, Vempati said. It will also use the funding to conduct additional clinical trials. In May, it gained Breakthrough Device Designation by the Food and Drug Administration for patients 18 years and older with a diagnosis of chronic musculoskeletal pain, depression and anxiety. Wysa is now working to receive full FDA approval as a prescription digital therapeutic, meaning something physicians can subscribe for treatment. 
The Wysa app is an AI-driven chatbot that provides cognitive behavioral health therapy 24/7. Users do not need a username or login, which Vempati claimed provides privacy and reduces stigma for people seeking mental health care. The app asks users open-ended questions to prompt them to respond with how they’re feeling. Then it guides them through techniques, created by clinicians, to reframe negative thoughts or build new behaviors.
“While Wysa has over a 100 natural language understanding AI models through which it listens, the prompts it provides are not AI — they come from a clinician-approved rule engine that allows it to respond intelligently, appropriately, while maintaining clinical safety,” Vempati said.
The app started with four AI models: an ability to classify sentiment, emotion, SOS and objection (when users feel they’re not being fully understood). Through an analysis of conversations by clinicians and designers, new models were created, eventually reaching over 100 models in the past six years. Wysa’s AI evolved through co-design between clinicians, users and designers, Vempati said.
“For example, a large number of users objected to reframing negative thoughts about a cheating partner,” Vempati said. “This led us to create a new model to detect that the user was talking about a relationship with trust issues, and took a different path to motivating them to follow the therapeutic pathway.”
He claimed that because the app is built on data from 4.5 million users from 65 countries, a diverse population with different life experiences can use it and benefit from it. That diversity is also reflected in Wysa’s team members that include licensed therapists from all over the world who speak different languages, he said.
Free and premium versions of the product are offered. The free version involves the AI companion and an initial set of tools users can use to improve their mental health, while the premium version provides an entire toolset and unlimited coaching. There are three options for the premium version, which allows users to directly talk to a therapist: 12 therapy sessions over a quarter cost $144.99; four sessions each month cost $79.99 or one session each week costs $29.99.
While the company allows consumers to use its services directly, the products are also meant for employers, public health agencies and payers/providers.
Wysa’s main competitors are employee mental health benefit services like Spring Health, mental health apps like Talkspace and AI-powered chatbots like Woebot. But Vempati said Wysa differentiates itself from competitors by offering support 24/7.
“Some competitors are focused on employee health benefit packages that include traditional health or mental health apps but these are not available 24/7 and often are not enough to help people through a difficult period,” Vempati said. “Wysa is the only AI-powered 24/7 mental health solution providing users with the guidance and tools they need to maintain their mental health and prevent deterioration, empowering users to take a proactive approach toward their own mental health.” 
Vempati claimed Wysa addresses health inequity by providing free mental health access that users can receive at any time of the day. He said that 95% of its consumers who access it directly — meaning not through employers, public health agencies or payers/providers — use the free version of the app. Not requiring a login, diagnoses or insurance also removes barriers to seeking care through the app, Vempati said. 
For those who can’t access the app via smartphone, Wysa is available on the internet for its enterprise and public health partners. Vempati said the company added features for visually impaired consumers, and participated in an Apple accelerator program to implement the features. Wysa is also working with AWS, a subsidiary of Amazon, to add in voice features. Lastly, it received funding from Google Assistant Fund to expand its voice features.
“The intent in building Wysa is to make such social determinants of health irrelevant — to ensure ‘permission-free’ mental health access, where anyone with a smartphone is able to get high quality, early stage, support; anytime and anywhere,” Vempati said. “It’s our hope that the free version of Wysa will one day be available in every language so anyone with access to a computer or smartphone has the opportunity to improve their mental health.”
Photo: SIphotography, Getty Images

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