Insurance Research Institute Releases Report
"Insurers to Offer Points and Premium Discounts for Promoting Healthy Diets"
Insurance companies have proposed offering benefits such as points or premium discounts to customers who improve their health by using fresh food platforms like Coupang and Market Kurly. The idea is to encourage customers to make healthier dietary choices and reduce the insurers' risk of paying out claims.
On the 9th, the Korea Insurance Research Institute revealed this in a report titled "The Spread of Online Fresh Food Platforms and Insurance Companies' Responses."
Fresh food platforms are services that allow consumers to easily purchase and receive healthy ingredients online. Their "dawn delivery" service delivers ordered ingredients by the next morning. Since COVID-19, the service areas have significantly expanded, especially in urban centers.
The Korea Insurance Research Institute introduced recent studies showing that fresh food platforms contribute to overall health improvements such as increased physical activity, reduced body mass index (BMI) and hypertension, and improved mental health. In regions where fresh food platforms operate, walking time increased by an average of 6.66% before and after the platform's introduction compared to other regions. This demonstrates that consumers are not only purchasing and consuming fresh food but also changing behaviors related to their health.
In areas where fresh food platforms operate, the average BMI decreased by 0.22%. For an adult with an average body type, this corresponds to a weight loss of approximately 1.1 to 1.8 kg. According to the Catholic University St. Mary's Hospital Lifelong Health Promotion Center, losing about 1 kg can prevent various adult diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia, and significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
The prevalence of hypertension decreased by 3.32%. This is closely related to an overall improvement in health management levels. Although the incidence of depression was not statistically significant initially, it showed a decreasing trend over time and was significantly lower after seven years.
The impact of fresh food platforms on health and health-related behaviors was more positive among women. This is analyzed to stem from differences in dietary preferences, health behaviors, and lifestyles by gender. Researcher Jae-il Cho from the Korea Insurance Research Institute said, "Fresh food platforms increase accessibility to fresh and healthy foods, promoting healthy dietary choices," adding, "They can also contribute to strengthening overall well-being and preventive health care."
The Korea Insurance Research Institute suggested that insurance companies should operate reward programs based on the degree of health indicator improvements using healthy diet purchase records linked with fresh food platforms. For example, if an insured submits records of healthy food purchases made through an online fresh food platform to the insurer, they could receive points to purchase additional products on that platform. Insurers could also provide additional rewards such as premium discounts to policyholders who maintain a healthy diet over a certain period, offering incentives for continuous health management. Another method is to provide differentiated rewards based on improvements in health indicators such as BMI or blood pressure reduction, not just dietary habits.
This approach also helps reduce insurers' risk of claim payouts. Researcher Cho said, "Insurance companies can lower the disease risk of health insurance subscribers through risk assessment and tailored management of high-risk groups based on health data and diet records accumulated by fresh food platforms," adding, "It will also enable effective health insurance product design and the provision of subscriber-customized insurance services."
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