MedScreen+, a breakthrough solution developed by Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (RGA) and Prudential Hong Kong, has won the Product Innovation Excellence Award at the Insurtech Connect Asia Awards this June. The solution is set to transform insurance underwriting across Asia.

The first-in-market digital underwriting solution combines optical character recognition (OCR), artificial intelligence, integrated with RGA’s AURA Next digital underwriting engine. The tool is designed to evaluate medical reports in less than half the time required by traditional methods, offering a more efficient and transparent process for underwriters.

Insurers in the city see millions of health assessments each year, often relying on bulky hardcopy medical reports that come with insurance applications.

Driven by a culture where workplace checkups are often mandatory or provided as an employee benefit, these reports generate vast amount of digital health data while adding layers of complexity to traditional underwriting.

“MedScreen+ is revolutionary — the first in the market to transform life underwriting by leveraging real health data and medical reports, moving beyond outdated questionnaires,” says Carmony Wong, Senior Vice President, Southeast Asia Markets & Chief Executive Officer, Hong Kong at RGA.

MedScreen+ improves operational efficiency by using OCR to digitise health checkup reports, converting complex text and images into structured data. It then uses AI-driven risk quantification to interpret the data and map health information against underwriting requirements, with RGA’s AURA Next digital underwriting engine assessing this structured data and providing indicative underwriting outcomes based on severity.

“We’re making underwriting faster, more accurate, and simpler than ever before,” says Carmony.

Prudential Hong Kong is also proud to be the first insurer in Hong Kong to implement this technology, aimed at streamlining the underwriting process.

Candy Au Yeung, Chief Customer Operations and Health Officer at Prudential Hong Kong, commented on the initiative. “We recognise the importance of providing swift protection for our customers. In response to this critical need, we introduced MedScreen+ to streamline our underwriting process, in partnership with RGA,” she said. “This initiative underscores our commitment to being a forward-thinking, customer-centric company, dedicated to delivering efficient solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers.”

Better efficiency and workflow

The system can process more than 160 different lab tests, including blood tests, ultrasounds, urine tests, ECG, chest X-rays, and CT scans — a comprehensive approach that allows for a thorough assessment of routine health checkups and medical requirements without the time-consuming manual reviews that traditional underwriting needs.

And this has significantly reduced underwriting processing times, with over 4000 applications since launch with eligible medical reports that can be streamlined through automation, says Prudential and RGA.

By automating the processing of test results, Prudential says that underwriters can focus on more complex assessments, instead of manually reviewing extensive medical reports.

The system also ensures consistent underwriting decisions, minimising errors and discrepancies and maintaining consistent risk assessment standards.

At the same time, MedScreen+ also supports Prudential’s financial consultants by providing quick and indicative underwriting results at the application stage.

The two firms will integrate additional types of medical evidence and expand the scope of health screening reports it can process, ensuring that MedScreen+ can remain responsive to market demands.

“We are committed to expand the solution to incorporate multiple medical evidence types and a wider range of health check-up reports, so MedScreen+ will continue to meet evolving market needs,” says Carmony Wong.

Key to scale

As Hong Kong's insurance market continues to grow — with HK$59 billion spent on insurance policies in 2023 alone1 — solutions like MedScreen+ will be essential for insurers looking to scale operations without compromising on service quality or underwriting accuracy.

As insureds increasingly expect faster, more transparent services, innovations like MedScreen+ will be critical in helping insurers meet these demands while maintaining rigorous risk assessment standards.

Insurers and reinsurers can work together to meet these demands — creating the best of both worlds.

"This collaboration underscores our shared commitment to customer excellence and our dedication to digitally enabling the customer experience,” says Carmony Wong.

This partnership has represented the best of what insurers and reinsurers can achieve together, says Candy. “With RGA’s technical capabilities and Prudential’s deep customer focus, we’re shaping an underwriting model that’s fast and scalable, and built around the evolving expectations of today’s customers.”

For insurtechs, this collaboration between a leading insurer and a global reinsurer demonstrates how partnerships can accelerate innovation and bring transformative solutions to market.