Insurtech Igloo has partnered with HD to provide health-related micro-insurance products via the HDmall healthcare marketplace platform in Thailand.
Muang Thai Insurance (MTI), a non-life insurance company, will be underwriting the health insurance products such as cancer and mobile syndrome insurance, and more, according to a release.
HD is a direct-to-consumer, direct-pay healthcare marketplace in Southeast Asia. HD utilizes e-commerce technology to connect direct-pay patients to hospitals and healthcare SMEs, with the mission to bring affordable healthcare to the ‘99%’.
The Healthtech startup reports 6 million users and recently sold over 10,000 Moderna vaccines within 12 hours via the HDmall platform.
Sheji Ho, CEO and Co-Founder of HD, commented:
“Igloo’s tech capabilities and insurance expertise will join our portfolio of ecommerce technologies that empower direct-pay healthcare including credit card installment payments and buy-now-pay-later solutions that have already enabled people to pay for high-ticket healthcare procedures such as In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), Cesarean Delivery (C-Section), and Lasik; dental-related products such as Clear Aligners and Invisalign; as well as medical aesthetics-related procedures.”
Raunak Mehta, Chief Commercial Officer of Igloo, said they are happy to partner with HD their first digital health partner.
“Together, we aim to create an insurance customer journey that meets the needs of today’s digital consumers, especially in Southeast Asia and in Thailand where technology has become more and more a part of our daily lives. HD’s healthcare marketplace and unique access to Millennial and Gen Z patients is the perfect fit for us to implement our technology of digital insurance that is relevant in today’s world. Igloo will continue to look at expanding its partnership in the digital health space across the SEA region.”
According to Igloo, across Southeast Asia around 40% of healthcare expenditure is paid out of pocket (compared to 10% in the US).
Igloo believes that with the rise of the ‘Creator Economy’ an increasing number of Millennial and Gen Z consumers are looking for more control over their healthcare consumption.
Sheji said they view Igloo’s micro health insurance as a perfect compliment to their direct pay healthcare strategy:
“With only 0.06% health insurance penetration (gross written premiums out of GDP), we need to take an out-of-the-box approach to empower patients in Thailand to finance healthcare.”
Igloo’s technologies is said to be integrated into HD and applied to both self-checkout and conversational commerce on the HDmall direct-pay healthcare marketplace platform.