AOC’s CEO Olivier Le Faouder Shares his Experience with French Expats, the Asian Insurance Market, and their UGB Partnership

 

We’ve had the chance to talk to Mr Olivier Le Faouder, AOC Insurance Broker’s CEO about AOC’s services, plans for the future, partnerships, and experiences. Mr Le Faouder has been in the insurance industry since 1995, and he is a certified European Insurance Broker with expertise in the French Expat and Asian IPMI market. 

AOC Insurance Broker has over 25 insurance partners with offices in France, Asia, and South Amerca. Learn more about AOC and Mr Le Faouder’s insights through the full interview below.

  

Q: Can you tell us about AOC and your services? 

A: AOC Insurance Broker is an international health insurance comparator for expats. We deal with individuals, families and companies with employees abroad. We handle every nationality and we can communicate in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

 

We are experts perfectly mastering the specificities of health insurance and expatriation. We have our headquarters in France, but we are also located in Asia and now in South America.

We represent every insurer of this market and we know their strengths and weaknesses up to the smallest details. When it comes to the individual international health insurance marketplace, we created a comparison tool accessible via an extranet site, AOC Expatcare (www.aoc-expatcare.com), which enables to compare insurance providers and their health plans with a detailed benefits table.

 

We also gave grades to the services offered by every insurer on 10 selected criteria, which enables a reliable recommendation, which is not based only on prices but rather on “Best value” in an effort to bring transparency and independence.

 

Our retention rate is very high because we regularly challenge our clients’ policies in order to tailor the health plan as best as possible to their needs and budget. Contrary to some of our peers, we don’t think that international health insurance can be sold online because it requires a particular attention to clients’ needs, a perfect knowledge of the market and of its actors depending on the location of the expat.

 

Furthermore price is not a key-element because the sustainability and the governance of the insurer must also be taken into account in a market where health costs are in general badly managed, mostly because of an unawareness and a lack of investment in health networks.

 

Lastly, preventive care services and connected devices in the e-health sector are still not spread enough or not spread at all even though the industry will also have its “uberisation” which will enable to reduce the most expensive risks for the insurers.

 

In our opinion, the customer is not yet at the centre of the relationship for the insurers. New additional digital services will come rapidly as add-ons on top of the health cover and will help better manage the health of customer (e-health app, coaching programs, expat assistance programs, food and diet training, sports etc.).

 

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Q: How has your partnership with United Global Brokers (UGB) affected your products and services?  

A: We have initiated a partnership with UGB. Time will show if it will improve our exposure and help grow our expertise in the market. We bring our core business expertise which is the comparator and furthermore in the Benelux market to help them understand the competitive landscape, tailor their B2B market offer and adjust their products to the specific needs of the French and Belgium markets including the CFE and the ORPS.

 

Q: Can you tell us about your experience with the French abroad and how they relate to IPMI products as expats?  

A: The international health insurance is first a nationality market. French expats represent a large market and are not to be handled in the same way as Americans, British or other nationalities. They require more advice and attention because they don’t necessarily master the mechanism of private insurance or of health costs abroad. In their country, French nationals benefit from Social Security and from top-up insurance schemes (Mutuelle) often subsidised by employers under the collective agreement. Abroad, the equivalent is the CFE (Caisse des Francais à l’Etranger) with an international top-up in addition. For expats, we compare these 2 systems with our extranet site AOC Expatcare and identify the best option according to their situation but also to their location.

 

Q: How has been your experience in Asian markets so far? 

A: For us, the Asian market is more mature than the French one and much more transparent with increased competition, that is why a professional intermediary brings a true added value. We follow up on this market with Romain Camillo, our director Asia in charge of the development of our client portfolio. We have an excellent image and a very high customer satisfaction rate because we are transparent and help them throughout their whole insurance policy life.

 

Q: What are your plans for development in the future? 

A: We will continue to recruit and train experts with a high level of knowledge and to focus our development on the corporate market, yet pursuing our growth in the individual market with a digital offering and comparison. In 2017, we will launch for the individual market a mobile app providing plan comparison and grading. We focus on our brand: AOC Insurance Broker, our digital “internet” activity with professional IPMI experts and we can say we are already well advanced in the next steps of developments…

 

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