'How my sarcoma diagnosis led to an insuretech solution'

Antoni Peychev, chief product officer at Tamedocs, said there was a definite need for a technological solution to the problem of getting the appropriate medical records sent to insurers so consumers could get tailored policy quotes in a fair and reasonable time.

Peychev said he had first-hand experience of trying to get medical insurance when he was diagnosed with a very rare, yet treatable, type of skin cancer called Dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans.

DFSP begins in connective tissue cells in the middle layer of the skin, and grows into lumps of tissue near the skin's surface.

But despite a very high success rate in treatment and being DFSP-free for more than five years, Peychev said his experience of attempting to get life insurance was "a struggle".

Commission should be banned across the board.Katz

He said: "The insurer quoted 15 weeks to get back to me. They needed a medical report and we’ve heard from insurers that, because of the pandemic, GPs are currently putting medical reports for quote purposes at the back of the queue which significantly slows down getting an insurance quote.

"This made things very difficult for me as a user.

"This led to my considering how we could make it easier for people with complex medical issues to get insurance cover more quickly, by automating the transfer of relevant medical information from the National Health Service records onto our platform (with the patients’ explicit consent), to be picked up securely and safely by the insurer."

Tamedocs will use insurers' decision trees to understand what data points are needed for them to underwrite the policy, and will only pull in the relevant information from the individual's NHS records. 

Peychev explained: "Let's say a client has diabetes. They would consent to Tamedocs getting the data from the NHS and allowing insurers to view said data on the Tamedocs platform, securely and directly."

According to Peychev, there is already a challenger insurance company working with Tamedocs on a prototype. The company is also in talks with an automated underwriting platform, with many other insurers waiting in the background for the product. 

"As a product manager I ask 'Is there a problem, and what is the solution?'

"Insurance products are supposed to be a peace-of-mind product, but to date we have seen big insurance companies being slow to change their processes.

"It seems the future might be smaller, more agile companies that can underwrite clients easily and simply, on a yearly basis and, as the policyholder ages, the premium changes. This would provide much more flexibility for the end user."

Commission was the RDR's 'Big Hole'

His comments come as challenger insurance company Deadhappy announced the closure of another round of crowdfunding on Seedrs, raising £6m from around 1,000 professional investors - nearly £1m more than it set out to raise.

The Leicester-based fintech insurer told FTAdviser it was ready to start working with advisers. Co-founder Phil Zeidler said: "We don’t want to work with life insurance specialists.

"No adviser in that space would sell our product, because we’re so much cheaper and so the commission is so much lower,” Zeidler explained. 

“We suit advisers who don’t bother offering protection because it’s too hard or complicated. That’s where we’ll do well.”

As reported by FTAdviser, Deadhappy's founder estimated the difference in commission between advising on a traditional insurer’s policy and a Deadhappy one could be as big as £750, with the former earning an adviser £1,000 and the latter earning them just £250.

But responding to Zeidler's comments, former sole trader Harry Katz, who advised on protection as well as wider financial planning, said: "Commission?

"This was the big hole in the retail distribution review.

"Commission should be banned across the board. I had no problem charging a fee for protection. I just made a spreadsheet that showed the premium with commission, the commission paid and then the same thing, but without commission and then adding my fee.

"When clients saw what they saved over the term on a fee basis - it was a no brainer. Of course my fee was reasonable and a lot less than the potential commission.  

"People still taking commission have no right to call themselves independent. They are the agents of the provider."

simoney.kyriakou@ft.com