Allianz Care has reported a significant increase in demand for international health insurance services since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with year-on-year sales of private individual/family policies up 235% in Germany, 100% in Singapore and 65% in the UAE. Allianz Care is the international health brand of Allianz Partners.
 

Some of the key uplifts in demand for health and wellbeing advice and digital health services include:

• 48% increase in web traffic to AllianzCare.com in March, with a further increase of 83% in April, with visitors keen to keep up to date with the latest information on the pandemic. 
  
•  6,000 subscriptions to the Allianz Care channel on the BrightTALK platform, which has been used to broadcast webinars on COVID-19. This is up from an average of 380 subscribers before the pandemic. Almost 3,000 insured members attended one webinar alone with Dr. Ulrike Sucher, the company’s Chief Medical Officer for International Health, in which she outlined recommendations on steps they could take to protect themselves.
  
• Significant increase in demand for Allianz Care’s Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), with users looking for further information on financial advice, as well as seeking counselling services and advice on stress management.
• 257% increase in calls made to Allianz Care’s 24/7 medical advice line. The medical advice line is staffed by an experienced medical team that can address queries in real-time, including general medical advice and information regarding self-care. To provide further support, a COVID-19 digital symptom checker was added to the service, which has already been used by more than 46,000 customers to date.
• Year-on-year increase in sales of individual policies across almost all markets, most notably 235% in Germany, 100% in Singapore, 65% in the UAE, 62% in Italy, 57% in France and 48% in Spain.

Allianz Care has provided ongoing support to members throughout the COVID-19 emergency, confirming that customers contracting the virus are covered by their healthcare policies. It has also made temporary changes to its cover such as extending the period of cover for emergency medical treatment for those trapped outside their normal region of cover, from 6 weeks to 21 weeks.

Speaking about the surge in demand for support services and the action being taken to address it, Paula Covey, Chief Marketing Officer for International Health said:

“The global emergency being experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in its impact on people and businesses. People are understandably worried, not only about their own health, but also about that of their families and loved ones. As well as the general uncertainty, there’s also increased concern stemming from the emotional and financial impact. It wasn’t a surprise that there’d be an increase in demand for support services and advice – whether through our EAP, 24/7 helpline, webinars or the website. However the scale of the demand did take us somewhat by surprise. We were particularly pleased with the strong levels of participation and engagement in the webinars".

“The reaction to our COVID-19 digital symptom tracker also demonstrated just how much people want to address concerns from the safety of their own home, while some hospitals and clinical settings are either experiencing overcrowding or trying to mitigate it. While our medical advice line gives customers access to more than 120 health professional who can support them regardless of their location".

“In response to the situations our customers are finding themselves in, through no fault of their own, we’ve temporarily changed some of the terms of our policies. We want to support people who are stuck outside their normal region of cover due to global travel restrictions. So our cover for medical emergencies outside the normal region of cover has been temporarily extended from 6 weeks to 21 weeks. When we say we care about our customers, emergency situations like this are where we really get a chance to prove that. It’s not an empty promise. We have to be there for our customers and from a business continuity point of view, we were already set-up for staff to work from home. So this has been a seamless transition and it’s very much business as usual".