| Kippreport.com

Fever pitch

March 24, 2011 3:05 by shafeer

You cannot be casually in the health insurance business because the service level required is very great and the kind of philosophy is very different.

In property and casualty, historically they have got most of their bottom lines by taking the money and making investments. They are willing to give up on the margins. In health insurance, you can’t do that. Your goal is to make money on your underwriting line and protect your investments.

For example, 90 per cent of our investments is in fixed deposits in Abu Dhabi banks. We don’t have investments in real estate. We have small amount in equities. We have some bonds, but they are all connected to the Abu Dhabi government. Our average yield on our portfolios is in excess of six per cent. In this kind of climate, it is excellent. What we have is a totally safe liquid portfolio.

Q: There are increased incidences of fraud involving doctors and pharmacies. How can the industry keep this in check?

There are a couple of things that can be done and are being done already. We have hired a number of doctors who are viewing cases and we have a third-party administrator.

What we have started to do is to check some of the approvals that are, for example over AED20,000. We do the approvals ourselves and have a system  of previews — pre, post and concurrent previews.

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Tags: Health, Healthcare, hospital, illness, insurance, Middle East, policy, UAE