‘Having not to pay from your pocket is key in managing your healthcare risks’

Enforcing health insurance across all employers through effective legislation will enable Nigeria harness the potential in that sector and bridge the gap in annual health spend put at N1.8 trillion. Tope Adeniyi, CEO, AXA Mansard Health in this interview with Modestus Anaesoronye shares his thought on the Company’s services, potential of the sector and future prospects. Excerpts

Take us into AXA Mansard Health, what does the organisation do?

AXA Mansard Health is a subsidiary of AXA Mansard Group, which is the entity of AXA Nigeria. AXA is a global entity with businesses in insurance, health, asset management and is the biggest insurance group in the world. AXA operates in 59 countries with over 103 million clients with asset under management in excess of 1.3 trillion Euros. And so that makes it the largest insurance entity in the world in terms of size, brand, equity and also as a great place to work. The association of AXA and Mansard in December 2014 gave birth to AXA Mansard group, with one of the subsidiaries as AXA Mansard Health. Now, the focus of this health insurance subsidiary is to provide domestic and international quality healthcare solutions to the populace through properly structured healthcare financing insurance and healthcare administration. So, that overall provides high quality healthcare that is affordable, by polling premium from many people to take care of those who fall sick. With this, we are able to provide healthcare plans that individually people might not be able to afford on their own in the event of serious health risks. AXA Mansard Health therefore occupies the position of rendering high quality healthcare at an affordable premium to both individual and corporate clients for both domestic and global cover.

There are other institutions offering similar service, what makes you stand out in the business of healthcare?

At AXA Mansard Health, our unique selling point is largely on exceptional service delivery as well as understanding our customers. So, end-to-end of our processes resolves around the customer. So, we understand customers and their capabilities and are able to design solutions that meet their needs. We listen to them; we work with them, we are able to customise our solutions to meet their need and grow with them. So, we bring in a lot of our capabilities which differentiates us from other people, and also enable us offer seamless solutions with high technology driven platforms and systems. For instance, at AXA Mansard Health, you have enrolment done online, your card is chip based card, so it helps you access hospital services very fast.

You do not need to queue forever; you undertake key services online; you have online booking for your hospital visits and your have online access to records of your patronage to the hospitals. You can contact our 24/7 call centres via email, via SMS that are converted to email at their site. The technology is quite advanced and people benefit from this, and are able to have good health care without going through pains. We different through offering of exceptional service delivery, we also different through giving an enriched platform of hospital and provider services that goes beyond the shores of Nigeria, so that any where you are outside Nigeria you are covered.

Mobility is critical in this service so that anywhere employee travel for training, vacation or business meeting the customer is covered there with our network of hospitals and providers. This makes us totally different from every other, and our network of hospitals continue to expand because as AXA which is now domiciled in Nigeria, we are providing you healthcare without boundaries. We understand the mobility of workforce in Nigeria and we understand the globalisation that is going on today. We are your health keeper and we are with you everywhere you go.

Who is qualified to access your service, and what does it take to be a customer in this platform?

As AXA Mansard Health, you could come in as retail or corporate client. Coming as corporate, that means you are an SME, small or large or as group and by this, you are entitled to the group’s package and are for minimum of 20 people. As individual clients, you can also come here as retail buyer for you and your family and the benefits are also there. The premium also differs depending on what packages you would want to take. There is basic, there is luxury and all that. But for basic covering say a family of five, it ranges from about N150, 000 per annum, that is N12, 000 per month.

Nine months gone into the year, how has the healthcare industry fared looking at the political and economic environment?

We are in a very challenging environment no doubt. The impact is also evident in healthcare participation. First of all, there is dearth of data and what you find is generally estimates, and there is also shortage of information. However, we have industry leaders that could give perspective of how the industry has fared.

It is still public sector driven; over 70 percent industry enrolment today is public sector while 30 percent is private. The public sector includes federal government which is about 5 million lives out of the total 8 million lives covered in Nigeria today. You have just about 3 million that is private with a large chunk coming from community based insurance that constitutes about 1 million lives.

You can see that the industry has not really grown significantly and may have managed to keep its existing customer base, and growing at marginally 10 percent. So, there is huge, huge opportunity for growth. So, the challenge in the economy no doubt has had its own impact on health insurance, but more largely is the low awareness.

Awareness is quite low, and people have not been able to see the benefits and so a lot needs to be done by the industry, constantly educating the people to see the need for health insurance.  By having not to pay from your pock is key in managing your health risk, because if the unexpected happens you might not be in position to pay immediately.

Though you have mentioned about paucity of data in the healthcare industry in Nigeria, but what will be your estimate on the value of this industry?

Potential value and actual value: I start with the actual value, the actual value of the industry today will be about N150 billion, and may be by the end of this year it will be close to N170 billion, so, that includes the private sector, the public sector and may be the one that could take it to another N10 billion is the millennium development goals and community healthcare which is partly funded by international health agencies. That can take it N170/N180 billion. But the industry is still less that N200 billion in gross premium. In terms of number, the people covered are about 8.5 million lives. So, the value is by estimate, when you look at what is happening in the public sector and that of the private sector.

I will be asking, what is exciting to you about this industry given the passion you have expressed here?

The most exciting thing for me is the thrill of adding value to human beings; the thrill of caring for people; the thrill of giving opportunity to people to recover from their illness through help and the joy of saving lives.

Many people wouldn’t have made it if there was no healthcare intervention and this is what we are preoccupied with day and night. Just yesterday night, about 1am, i was called to arrange an emergency service to move out a sickle cell patient that had an emergency. This wouldn’t have been possible if the patient didn’t have a health insurance.

If you call on your own a private ambulance service, they may want to have assurance that they will get their money on arrival; if you call a taxi, you may be disappointed and if there was no car available or no body to drive, it could become dangerous. But within minutes and hour, we were able to arrange an ambulance and the patient was taken to choice hospital and the patient is stable as i speak.

There is nothing like having a proper healthcare plan. The joy we have is that we are adding tremendous value to life. It’s practical, it’s real and it’s experiential. You feel it and everybody feels the opportunity of being cared for.

Five years from now, where do you see this industry and what can be done to grow the sector?

Many things are poised to change in the next couple of years. First of all, as a nation, a number of things will have to happen: Mandatory bill for health insurance needs to be signed by the president where health insurance becomes compulsory for all employers. And the next step, it must not be compulsory for only public sector employers, state or local governments, but also for all private sector employers.

All employers of labour, just like the pension reform Act that compels employers having three employees and above to enrol for pensions and group life insurance. The same way, all employers should be mandated to buy valid health insurance for their employees. The state should compel everyone to take one form of health insurance or the other as a matter of policy and must be driven by regulation.

Countries that have attained universal health coverage like Netherland, Switzerland, even in America had to drive it through health insurance system. You cannot have government alone pay 100 percent for healthcare because it will always be very expensive, as technology advances, environment creating new diseases as well as new technologies creating new solutions.

All these alone cannot be taken care of by the government. Health insurance is the way to go. If legislations comes on time and implementation becomes very rapid, we see the health insurance sector ballooning from the current less than 4 percent of the market share of the total population, and less than 1 percent of the GDP of the country to about 2 percent in the next five year. The health spent market today is about N1.8 trillion naira and here we are doing N150 billion. We see healthcare tarrying in the next few years with legislation, awareness and new investment in the providers’ side.   

Modestus Anaesoronye