Company MEDICARD Philippines, Inc. has the potential to grow amid the growing demand for health care provision, seeking to provide it with product diversity and digitization.
“How many people in the Philippines have health care today? How many Filipinos need health care coverage? If you take a cycle looking at three to five years, I have to believe that the growth in the Philippine market in health care will continue, but also in the insurance sector in general,” MediCard Chief Executive Officer Julian Mengual told reporters on the sidelines of Wednesday’s event.
Citing AIA Philippines Life and General Insurance Co., Inc.’s 2025 Rethink Health Study, Mr. Mengual said the company wants to capitalize on the strong demand for healthcare solutions as out-of-pocket healthcare costs continue to rise for Filipinos.
“When you spend more than 40% on health care, there is a need for solutions. And we know that many diseases can be controlled if they are prevented and caught early. We can do this. That is why I am strong,” he said.
“Now the trick will be to help people who are not consumers of health care become consumers. And the challenge we need to face is to make sure that health care is affordable, to make sure that the solutions that we provide work, and they bring all the parts that we can put together to help customers meet their needs.”
MediCard plans to introduce embedded insurance products this year, possibly through multiple partnerships, Mr. Mengual.
“We have identified what we think are areas where there is an unmet need, and we have identified partners who we believe would be a good fit in that space to support us, now we are starting to put together proposals and collaborate,” he said.
“So, the timelines will depend a lot on the partners and their willingness to take these solutions and their appetite and their time, but we already see two or three spaces where we see a significant opportunity.”
He added that they will expand their products to both corporate and retail customers.
“I see that we will continue to build the right propositions for people that can be bought directly or that can be bought with partners and that can be embedded in our partner solutions. That’s one part, but I see this as the first step to building future propositions together for companies that go beyond this.”
MediCard will also continue its investments in insurtech to improve its services and distribution, especially those that use emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
“I think that insurtech in general helps us to do things differently. We have invested a lot in AI at this time. I think of AI as the next extension, especially agent AI, but also, I think that digitalization and making things frictionless and smooth information are all areas where insurtech will play a role,” said Mr. Mengual.
MediCard also expects continued demand for its newly introduced health care plan aimed at gig economy workers and other people without standard company benefits. Demand for MediCard HERO (Health Emergency Response On-Demand) will be run by its own agency channel following “significant” growth since its launch last month, Mr Mengual said.
“In fact, when we think that it will start to increase more now that we see in our organization channel that this is a product that they would like to prioritize to make it available to members, and the reason is that the prices are very affordable… And it provides excellent care,” he said.
“So we expect to see this growth over the course of the year in our unique channels that we have. In the beginning, it started as something that we introduced slowly in our direct channels, mainly Facebook, and now it’s something that we offer through our AI agents, and so on. So we expect to see improved trends in this.”
MediCard’s total revenue fell 75.39% year-on-year to P39.28 million in the first quarter from P159.66 million, data from the Insurance Commission showed. – Aaron Michael C. Sy
