Health Insurance Market Intelligence Tips – Part 3

Stay Current

It is incredibly easy to become complacent in your intelligence gathering.  It is unacceptable to assume your data will always be relevant and useful.

Keeping your health insurance market intelligence data current allows you to keep your data in context.  This context will assist you in making high-level decisions based on preceding events.

• What happened before?
• How did we react then?
• What were the results of that reaction?

The important questions then become:

• How can I keep so much information up to date?
• How will this help me stay ahead of the competition?

How can I keep so much information up to date?  The software programs mentioned in Part 2 can be scheduled to run as often as you'd like. Since most health insurance companies update their data once a month, I would recommend gathering data just as often. Rates and coverage are constantly changing, which is why it is so important to keep current.

How will this help me stay ahead of the competition?  The data and information gained from health insurance market intelligence software can often be used however you wish. The departments listed in the introduction can each use the information uniquely, and all of them will assist in making more informed decisions about how to maximize value and ultimately gain market share. It can also be used for long term tracking to determine how volatile specific individual plans are to certain changes in the market.

For example, the pre-existing condition change in the health care legislation might have a greater impact on one company and/or plan when compared to another.  And tracking changes that occurred with you and your competitors when that provision went active will show you how they dealt with that challenge.

Knowing how your competitors react to certain changes in the market is important to understand.  This knowledge will allow you to gain more insight into how to position your company for maximum growth potential and minimizing the risks incurred to achieve that growth. The more you know, the better your position will be.

To put this all into perspective, please stand by for the last installment which will be the summary and conclusion.

Health Insurance Market Intelligence Tips – Part 2

Turn Data Into Information

One of the more difficult tasks in gathering health insurance market intelligence is obtaining enough data to formulate useful information. The following questions must be raised when acquiring data:

• How do I obtain data?
• What does the data mean?
• How can I use this data?

The internet has opened up a gateway to limitless information. There is a massive quantity of data out there and it is difficult to sift through it all and get only that which is most important to you.

How do I obtain data? Health insurance market intelligence software provides a method of gathering data from specific sources on the internet. It puts large quantities of data into a database which can be used to filter the data into information. Data can be obtained in this manner from yourselves, your competitors, and/or anywhere else that data is available.

What does the data mean? Once you have gathered what you consider to be a useful set of data, (for instance, as a health insurance provider, the rates, deductibles, and coverage of your competitors and what other regions they compete in) it can be reorganized in a fashion that would allow them to be easily compared. From there you can determine where your company stands apart from the competition, how you might be able to improve, and ultimately gain market share and increase value.

How can I use this data? The information gained can be logged for long term analysis. The most valuable of which would be to determine what market fluctuations affect you and your competitors the most. Especially in times like these where the market is changing rapidly, finding out what affects you relative to what affects your competitors will assist you in making more informed decisions later.

The information can be used in a nearly infinite number of ways within your company, and knowing more than your competition is the key to gaining market share. Health insurance market intelligence software is a fairly new concept, and it is one that is certainly going to be a positive game changer for those companies who have the foresight to take advantage of it.

To learn more about obtaining current information and why it is important, please continue on to Part 3 of Health Insurance Market Intelligence Tips.

Health Insurance Market Intelligence Tips – Part 1

Know Your Competition

Health insurance market intelligence efforts start with obtaining basic information about your competition:

• Which insurers compete for subscribers in your statistical market areas?
• How are insurer product portfolios changing with the changes in the market?
• How do other insurer plan offerings compare to your plans?
• What does the competitive health insurance plan landscape look like in your target statistical area markets?
• How are the new State Health Exchanges affecting your relevant markets?

If you are unable to answer those questions in whole or in part, you should probably be spending resources on gaining the entire picture if you want to gain market share and increase the value of your organization.

Which insurers are competing for subscribers in your statistical market areas? Health Insurance companies are entering and exiting markets every month. Competitor market volatility has increased with the changes in federal, state, and local legislatures. Keeping up with which insurers are entering and exiting which markets is becoming an incredibly difficult challenge.

Consequently, you have to keep up with these changes to stay competitive. The sooner you know what is going on, the better positioned you will be in reacting to any changes. Furthermore, if you monitor changes over time you can trend those changes to get an even deeper understanding of how a competitor strategy is playing out in the market.

How are insurers' product portfolios changing with the changes in the market? Knowing how your competition is reacting will give you a great deal of insight into how they operate, and what market fluctuations they are more susceptible to. Knowing your competitors as well as you know yourself will grant you the versatility necessary to react more quickly and more intelligently than your competitors.

How do other insurer plan offerings compare to your plans?  Most companies in the health insurance market design their plans and coverage specifically so that they are difficult to compare against other companies. It is a monumental task to sift through the data to figure out how they compare to your products and services directly. However, if your health insurance market intelligence efforts can overcome this hurdle, you will have the insight that will put you in an incredible position to own the markets in which you compete.

What does the competitive health insurance plan landscape look like in your target statistical area markets? If you are gaining success in one market and looking to expand, it will be of the utmost importance to understand the market in which you are headed. Expansion can be very risky business.  Maximizing your knowledge of a new area before going there can be tricky and rather costly.  Obtaining complete information of a potential market in a timely and cost effective manner will add a great deal of value for your company.

How are the new State Health Exchanges affecting your relevant markets? With the passing of the greatly publicized health care bill, many states are creating health exchanges to try to assist in the affordability of health insurance. So far, they are having a minimal impact. However, they are still in their infancy and the end game of these exchanges is yet to be fully realized. Keeping an eye on what services they are offering, and how far that service reaches will be paramount to succeeding in the future.

For more information on how you can gather this data and process it into information please continue on to 3 Health Insurance Market Intelligence Tips - Part 2

Health Insurance Market Intelligence Tips

The amount of data posted by health insurance companies in this day and age has grown exponentially, and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future.  Individual health insurance market intelligence efforts are expanding rapidly to keep pace and consume more information than ever before. Sorting through all of the data and turning it into useful information has become quite a challenge. Timely and quality is increasing in importance to keep up with the pace of change.

There are 3 main items that your business intelligence or market intelligence teams should be doing to help your company move ahead, and stay ahead of the competition:

1. Know your Competition

• Who are they?
• How are they adapting to market changes?
• How do they compare to my company?
• What are the new State Health Exchanges doing to the market?

2. Turn Data into Information

• How do I get all of my competitor’s information?
• What does it mean?
• What are my competitors and I more sensitive to?

3. Stay Current

• How can I keep so much information up to date?
• How will this help me stay ahead?

This is the overview of a 3 part blog series detailing the importance of the aforementioned items and related solutions. 

Subscribe to the blog to be notified when the next part of the 3 part series is posted!

1 Simple Step to Improve Your Health Insurance Competitive Intelligence

With the health insurance industry changing at such a rapid pace, ANY health insurance provider can fall behind the competitive curve in a short period of time.  Health insurance competitive intelligence is the best way to keep up with the changing competitive landscape.  Robust health insurance competitive intelligence has the ability to put you ahead of your competition. 

The Solution: Health Insurance Competitive Intelligence Software

Health insurance competitive intelligence software  is a relatively new concept that is of great value to both single state and multi-state insurance companies.  Programs specifically tailored for the individual health insurance industry keep you on top of your competition, and can track competitive information related to:

• Rates
• Benefits Coverage
• Geographic market trends where you are currently competing and where you are interested in expanding
• Demographic market trends for specific age/gender/family profiles that are critical to your risk portfolio

Health insurance competitive intelligence software programs aggregate enormous amounts of data, normalize it for easy comparison, and do so in a very short amount of time.  The information can be used by the following departments:

• Pricing Analysts
• Actuaries
• Product Managers
• Sales
• Executive Management
• Business Intelligence
• Industry Analysts

The individual health insurance industry is in a massive state of flux.  I strongly suggest looking into competitive intelligence software.  Take control and gain the competitive advantage.  Knowing what your competitors do not, is power in the Information Age; are you powerful?