The Life IQ platform harnesses the science of behavioural change and immerses the user in a contextually relevant ecosystem of content, gamification, communities, apps and devices to encourage sustainable change
DIGITAL INSURER’S ASIAN START UP INSURTECH AWARD
OVERVIEW
LifeiQ is a digital engagement business focused on behaviour change, within the context of health and wellbeing. The LifeIQ platform delivers a personalized digital experience based upon an individual’s circumstances and needs. Our approach is based upon the science of motivational change and meets the needs of insurers, employers and individuals. Designed to maximize individual well-being, reduce healthcare costs, and increase productivity, our solution is founded upon evidence-based, scientific research. LifeiQ allows insurers, employers and brands to engage with their customers in new and exciting ways. It has enabled the earning of trust and turned policyholders into brand advocates with high lifetime-value, by reducing claims costs and adding value to the customer.
THE PROBLEM WE SOLVE
LifeiQ addresses several challenges facing the Industry, as described in the graphic below.
Specifically, LifeiQ focuses upon two core areas:
1. The Creation of Engagement: Typically, Insurance companies experience the following:
a. Lack of trust of their customers
b. Limited or no engagement outside of sale & renewal
c. Limited or no insight into customer demographics or psychographics d. Poor recognition of valued customers
e. Inability to positively impact on claims costs
f. Not innovating around behaviour based products and pricing
2. The increasing risks posed by the overall health of policyholders and failure of traditional strategies of behavioural change: History has shown that traditional compliance-based models do little, if anything, to address underlying attitudes and behaviours towards healthy living. The cost of healthcare, obesity and avoidable chronic illness continues to grow exponentially each year. Compounding these issues, existing corporate and consumer online health & wellness offerings are typically expensive, lack engagement, personalisation, portability and neither encourage nor reward. Similar offerings in the market are based around compliance and expensive health checks that force members to spend thousands of dollars each year to remain in the program. Others give members access to a host of reward coupons and vouchers, with little heed paid to truly encouraging healthier lifestyles. Significantly, 8 behaviours cause 15 of the most common non- communicable diseases, which account for the large majority of the total cost of chronic illness worldwide (see graphic below).
LifeiQ allows Insurers to create a meaningful dialogue with its customers which has been shown to reduce risk and foster deeper engagement, which will lead to better retention and a stronger brand.
CRACKING THE CODE WITH SCIENCE
THE LifeIQ approach is based upon a scientifically valid approach to health behavior change.
LifeIQ draws on two major works by Dr Roy Sugarman for its inspiration: “Saving your life one day at a time: Seven ways to survive the modern world” (2013) and “Client-centered training: A trainer and coach’s guide to motivating clients” (2014), both of which lay out the science of both behaviour change and the critical areas of lifestyle that should be targeted by online programs.
The applied neuroscience behind engaging and then retaining people in healthy behaviour change begins with exploiting natural human drives of personal and collective control. In this way we are driven by curiosity about ourselves and others, a desire to share and emulate what others are doing and enjoying (Observational Learning Theory), and seeking to balance the demands of daily living with our capacity (The Flow Zone, thriving and flourishing).
As the figure above illustrates, LifeiQ focuses on 3 key drivers of engagement:
Discover:
People are attracted to novelty, because of inherent curiosity. By offering new and interesting facts and opinions from both Life IQ and their peers this continuing curiosity leads to deeper understanding.
Deeper understanding leads to a sense of mastery and control, which is intrinsically rewarding for the individual as they achieve things.
Share:
This newfound mastery drives the need for validation by relevant others or peers through sharing (look what I have achieved!). Typically, via social media and the platform itself. People choose to share with others in inclusive relationships. We are attracted to people who we like and who like us and share common values
We choose to follow (and reciprocally lead) with these people.
Thrive:
There are three core foundations of an optimized lifestyle. Movement, nutrition and mindset. The little things that we do in each area make a big difference. These become habits. It is much easier and realistic to encourage these incremental changes to drive a better lifestyle.
We avoid the trap of habituation through increasing novelty and complexity (increasing levels of mastery), keeping things fresh and interesting. This leads to Flow or people thriving, which is our goal.
LifeIQ thus targets the threshold of intrinsic motivation, adopting health behavior change, while the competing programs in the market try to achieve compliance by superficial approaches to rewards, guilt and coercion, or by attempts at education by experts, rather than driven by social competencies.
This integrated approach based in the neuroscience of behavioural change makes LifeIQ unique.
In summary, LifeIQ’s focus on fun, socializing, human curiosity, and resilience building, supporting self- efficacy rather than reliance on costly medicine, and hence allowing users to develop expertise and supporting health span rather than lifespan.
PLATFORM TECHNOLOGY
The platform is built around the neuroscience model to immerse the user in a contextually relevant ecosystem of content, gamification, communities, apps and devices.
The design philosophy is to adopt new and rapidly advancing technology to present the solution as fun, engaging and rewarding. The events, challenges and learning experiences have to appeal to users at many levels in order to become sustainable. Repetitive behaviours using gaming and other behavioural and social theory are the foundation on which the LifeiQ platform is built.
The underlying IT platform has been developed, in-house, over many years. Core IT features include, intelligent content management, micro and macro social integration, rewards and gamification, wearable technology aggregation, contextual polymorphic programming, communication automation, data and analytics. The core platform includes:
The platform delivers:
● Personalised user experience based on psychographic and contextual algorithms
● Incorporates members’ daily work-flow activities with a healthier lifestyle.
● Seamlessly integrates with the Internet of Things such as data aggregators like Apple HealthKit, Google Fit and wearable devices such as FitBit, Misfit Shine and Striiv,
● Works with new generation behaviour models, gamification, social media & recognition.
● Rewards members with points and badges
● Tracks and analyses big data to ensure a proactive approach to maximising the sponsor’s and member’s experience.
This facilitates a rich and rewarding customer journey, as laid out below:
CLIENT APPLICATIONS
The LifeiQ approach, being a combination of the application of the science of behavioural change, immersive digital platform and data-driven actuarial product design has and can be applied wherever there is the opportunity to engage customers in health and wellness.
LifeiQ has active customer instances across:
● The insurance Industry
● Employers
● Direct to consumer
● Managed care
Insurance Industry Examples:
Aviva Singapore: The LifeiQ approach and platform is marketed by Aviva as their
“Fit and Well” engagement platform. It has formed an important part of their ‘Group
/ Employer’ business since 2014. There are currently over 100 Employer Groups on the platform.
Sun Life Philippines launched a pilot program in 2015, in conjunction with LifeiQ. The pilot over-achieved on every KPI, including sign up numbers, visits and engagement. The retention rate, as illustrated in the graph below, were well above expectation.
Employers
LifeiQ, under the brand, SeventeenHundred, has a number of direct Employer relationship. We provide employee engagement portals to these Organizations
Direct to Consumer
Last year, LifeiQ launched its direct to consumer, subscription service, Fiitr. We partnered with Mobile Embrace, an Australian listed company, who distribute and market the product through its Carrier Billing partnership with a large range of Teco’s around the world.
Fiitr has launched in 5 countries and will continue to be rolled out to further regions this year, including Europe and the Middle East. According to Mobile Embrace, Fiitr is their most successful product ever, in terms of subscriptions and retention.
Disease Management (for Insurers)
LifeiQ is now also engaging with companies who are supporting the insurance industry, such as those in the critical illness and managed care industry. Our platform with CDE South Africa is focussed on cost and disease management and lowering risk through building efficacy of treatment. This leading edge project will redefine how patients and practitioners interact based upon a behavioural model that enhance clinical protocols and outcomes.
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