Bitesize InsurTech: Quealth

August 29, 2019

Quealth is a SaaS application that scores its users’ health and encourages changes in behaviour to promote healthy living.

The company focuses particularly on highlighting users’ risk to chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – diseases that are influenced by lifestyle choices such as diet and exercise. The five NCDS are cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes and lung disease.

Users’ “Quealth score” is generated by a risk algorithm that uses data from several sources. The core of the data comes from a user questionnaire but can also be pulled from wearables as well as from published research available on the five NCDs. This technology has been developed in collaboration with a range of academic partners across UK universities including the University of Nottingham, Loughborough and UCL.

Users receive an overall Quealth score as well as an individual score for each of the NCDs. Quealth have recently released a new feature, “Healthy Days”, which tracks how a user’s behavioural changes contribute to their overall health.

Quealth’s proposition targets both employers and insurers. To employers, it offers a means of encouraging healthy behaviours in the workforce and increasing overall employee wellbeing. To insurers, Quealth most obviously offers enrichment to the underwriting process, but also offers gamification capabilities, data insight and claims management. Each of these serve to enhance customer experience and ultimately reduce churn and lapse rates and lead to upsell or cross-sell opportunities.

Part of RGAx’s portfolio of life and health investments, Quealth are currently early stage. They are operational in the UK but are in meaningful discussions with players in the US, Canada, Europe and APAC. In October this year they will release a new version of their platform with additional functionality and improved user experience. Beyond 2019, Quealth are interested in enhancing their proposition with services like genetic data.

The Oxbow Partners view

Wellness has been an area of focus for life and health InsurTechs for some time. FitSense, for example, was an early mover and part of Startup Bootcamp’s first cohort in London. yulife is a more recent starter and Member of the Oxbow Partners Impact 25. Models all vary; for example Quealth is a supplier InsurTech whilst yulife also seeks to gain its own corporate customers.

The challenge for any data-oriented InsurTech is twofold. First, they need to gain customers (like any InsurTech), but then they need to demonstrate that their approach is more predictive than any other available approach – either traditional or new. This is true in any segment – commercial P&C pricing, lead generation or life underwriting.

The life and health market is coming quickly into focus for InsurTechs. Much of the momentum is coming from RGA’s RGAx team, which is actively investing in InsurTech businesses – but direct insurers are beginning to invest also after a slow start.

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