Prudential expands partnerships, AI for cross-border business: CEO

Prudential Hong Kong will expand healthcare partnerships and explore more use of artificial intelligence to capture growing opportunities from people crossing the border – in both directions – for medical treatment, according to its top boss.

The insurer handled more than 2,200 cross-border hospital claims in the first half of this year, according to Lawrence Lam, CEO of Prudential Hong Kong. Such claims represented 30 per cent of the total, up from 26 per cent a year earlier.

“We have seen an increasing trend of Hong Kong customers preferring to get medical treatment in the mainland hospitals in the Greater Bay Area for their lower costs,” he said in a media briefing on Tuesday.

The Greater Bay Area is a project Beijing rolled out in 2019 to integrate Hong Kong, Macau and nine mainland cities in China’s southern Guangdong province into an economic powerhouse. Many Hong Kong people now opt for retirement and medical care in the bay area. However, Lam said the trend was not one-way.

“Many mainlanders also like to come to Hong Kong to get treatment from the well-known hospitals in the city,” he said.

In a Prudential survey in the second quarter, 76 per cent of mainland respondents planned to visit Hong Kong within the next 12 months. Among them, 55 per cent planned to buy critical illness insurance while in the city, 40 per cent planned to get medical coverage and 45 per cent planned to purchase savings products.

“The survey result showed there is a strong demand for mainlanders to get healthcare-related insurance products in Hong Kong,” Lam said. “We will offer more medical products to meet their demand.”

South China Morning Post