With the aim of providing affordable insurance services for Hong Kong residents, BOC Group Life Assurance Company (BOC Life) and C-MER Medical Holdings (C-MER) signed a strategic partnership agreement on Wednesday with a view to launching cross-border medical insurance products.

As medical-related services are an important component of its business, BOC Life is attaching great importance to the emerging cross-border medical services market, and has ambitions to create a healthcare and retirement business ecosystem within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA).

Wilson Tang, chief executive of BOC Life, said he regards this collaboration as an attempt to develop the market for cross-border medical insurance services.

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“In this agreement, we plan to provide discounted insurance products for C-MER patients. Correspondingly, we need C-MER’s patients to purchase our cross-border insurance products,” Tang said.

“In the long term, if we can source more quality medical services in Greater Bay Area private hospitals, then we can provide more high-quality but reasonably priced insurance services. Then Hong Kong residents will have more choices, and the pressure on the city’s public medical institutions will be reduced,” Tang said.  

C-MER is a private medical group based in Hong Kong which owns several dental clinics in Shenzhen servicing over 200,000 Hong Kong residents last year. “Many Hong Kong residents increased their medical expenses in the Chinese mainland over the years,” said Dennis Lam Shun-chiu, chief executive officer of C-MER.  

In addition, given the growing trend toward healthcare integration in the Greater Bay Area, C-MER launched its C+ Health CKJ (Shenzhen) Hospital in January.

Lam, who is also a member of the National People’s Congress (NPC), said that insurance companies and private medical groups in Hong Kong cultivate cooperative relationships with a view to developing the insurance business.

“Insurance companies and private medical groups in the Chinese mainland have been imitating this collaboration model in recent years,” Lam said. And he agrees that the emergence of more private medical institutions in the Chinese mainland illustrates the broad range of opportunities that exists for this kind of strategic partnership agreement in the medical sector in the Greater Bay Area.

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Lam said C-MER’s hospitals and clinics in Shenzhen are able to operate at lower cost, mainly because of lower rental costs. Thus, they can offer Hong Kong consumers high-quality services at affordable prices.  

Contact the writer at thor_wu@chinadailyhk.com