Following the news that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) will soon start offering interest-bearing savings accounts, a report predicts that Apple will also offer health insurance in the coming years. A claim that makes some sense.
Insurtech, or insurance technology, is a booming sector of financial services, and Apple is a data king when it comes to personal information. Apple has long predicted that health services will be one of its most important offerings, largely due to its growing wearables. Its Apple Watch is the most popular smartwatch in the market, and it continues to offer users more health-related services like EKGs (ECGs), blood oxygen, activity monitoring, and, more recently, temperature sensors. Apple’s Airpods, the popular wireless earbuds, have been predicted to incorporate data soon too. It is not to hard to envision a health insurance product that integrates with some or all of these services to provide bespoke health insurance. Hit a daily activity goal? Boom, an insurance discount. While packaging all of this together may take some time, Apple Watches are already subsidized by certain health insurance providers. Not much of a leap for Apple to pull another Goldman and partner with a large underwriter to provide an Apple-branded health insurance product.
The report, as covered by Forbes, quotes Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, claiming Apple Insurtech will emerge by 2024. Wood states:
“They are in such a strong position to do this. They’ve got a wealth of personal health data through Apple Watch. If they join some of the dots together they can become a very competitive health insurance player and that potentially is going to have quite an impact on the structure of the healthcare market in the U.S.”
The integration of technology and financial services may ebb and flow, but the graph will continue to move higher over the coming decades. Technology is always at its best when it is ubiquitous, there when you need it, but not obtrusive, just like Apple’s wearable products.