Redesign of Pension, Health Products Urged.

To capitalize on pension and health-care financing reforms through-out the world, insurers must develop new products that will be more accessible to customers.

"We cannot simply deliver what we have in the past. We need a new type of product, because the competition is going to come in hard and heavy with portable, transparent products," said Donald McIsaac, an adviser to the World Bank's Financial Sector Development Department.

McIsaac pointed out that emerging product lines were about "delivering the product to all the people," rather than just the traditional target market--middle-income groups.

A second change, he suggested, was a move away from emphasis on indemnity, or compensating losses. "For some of the services that we are going to have to be providing in the future, we're going to have to find other alternatives, because indemnity basis is not always going to be easy to establish," he said.

With regard to health care, he said, "we have to be prepared to deliver, or pay for, the cost of health maintenance." McIsaac didn't elaborate on the mechanics of such a system, but he stressed that it would require a government-private sector partnership.