insurance coverage

Rethinking insurance: how prevention is better than a claim

Rethinking insurance: how prevention is better than a claim

After completing her first 5km run, Annette Ball was in floods of tears at the achievement.

It was the first milestone on a journey, starting in 2019, that has seen the 56-year-old music teacher from Coventry lose more than three stone in weight and establish a new regime of strenuous exercise nearly every day of the week.

Ball’s story is the kind of inspiring tale of self-improvement that flourishes on social media feeds, but what is more unusual is the company that she credits for getting her moving: her insurer.

A points-based scheme offered by life and health insurer Vitality, which uses a wearable device to track physical activity and offers financial benefits and vouchers for progress, was instrumental to her lifestyle shift.

“The bottom line is that it is insurance, but what it has enabled me to do is get healthier,” Ball says. “It’s certainly changed how I live now.”

It is just one example of a shift that is reshaping the centuries-old insurance sector, fuelled by new technologies and real-time data that insurers are increasingly gathering on their customers.

Vitality calls it “shared-value insurance”, others call it “active insurance”, but the core idea is the same — focusing

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Montgomery Co. schools could owe millions to former staff over prepaid insurance premiums

Former employees of Montgomery County Public Schools could be owed millions of dollars after a report found that they forfeited prepaid health insurance premiums when leaving the Maryland school system.

Former employees of Montgomery County Public Schools could be owed millions of dollars after a report found that they forfeited prepaid health insurance premiums when leaving the Maryland school system.

Anywhere from $3 million to $13.5 million in overpaid premiums were kept from retiring and departing staff at Montgomery County Public Schools over the course of two-plus decades, according to a new report from the county’s Office of Inspector General.



The overpayments were neither refunded to eligible employees nor remitted to health insurance providers.

The OIG said that the practice has been going on for at least 22 years, and that the school system first became aware of it about seven or eight years ago.

“A senior manager estimated that refunds due to individual retirees would likely range from $200 to $900 depending on the insurance plan they selected,” the report reads.

Over the last three years, the OIG said an average of 683 employees either retired or resigned from working with Montgomery County schools.

Those numbers helped shape

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