Payments for Consumer Health Insurance Claims Still Frequently Made by Paper Checks

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An industry-wide reliance on analogue solutions appears almost antiquated in our constantly linked digital age—until you consider the cost associated with this reliance. The most recent Ingo Money partnership reported that paper checks are still often used to pay for or distribute healthcare claims, indicating the predominance of these antiquated methods.

Typical payment methods

This is crucial since, at 19%, healthcare expenses account for the largest portion of payments made to surveyed consumers. (The matching check payout rate for property and casualty claims is much greater, but the frequency of such payments is often lower.) The total number of claims varies year, but since 2020, consumer payouts for healthcare have been the most frequent category.

Since they account for 14% of all claims, around 24 million American customers are anticipated to have received at least one insurance payment in the year prior to June 2022.

Despite the fact that this is a decrease from the 17% share of claims in 2021 that were health insurance-related, that year was exceptional for the insurance business due to the largest payment volume occurring in July and statistics correlating with the height of the pandemic.

All areas of the insurance market have returned to their pre-pandemic 2020 levels since that peak, when 24% of customers overall got at least one insurance payment in the 12 months prior to the poll.

However, with $1.37 trillion in industry-wide payouts in 2022, there will still be a significant amount of paper written.

Many insurers from many industrial sectors have limited or removed some payment alternatives despite consumer desire for greater options. For instance, 62% of received disbursements in 2022, a 12% decrease from 2021, offered clients the option of choosing quick reimbursements from insurance firms as a whole.

Health insurance firms, specifically, were bottom in the market for payment option, offering clients receiving their disbursements a choice of receipt method 57% of the time.