Our thoughts

When you have deployed an underwriting engine, that is not the end of the journey. Quite the opposite: it is just the beginning. You will have done extensive testing before launch to check that the rules are applying the same underwriting philosophy as your human underwriters, so you can rightly have a lot of faith in the original set-up. However, you can’t test absolutely everything – every possible case, every possible scenario – so there is a need to monitor what the engine is doing, and in particular how the rules are working. If something is not quite right, some…

‘Access to insurance’ is a term coined in the United Kingdom that refers to the ability of individuals to buy insurance cover. It came about as a result of concerns that people who present an extra risk, especially owing to a medical condition, should be enabled as far as possible to obtain cover in the interests of a fair and equal society. Recently an industry working party has been working on various ways to ensure fair access and to improve consumer understanding of underwriting and underwriting decisions. While this article was prompted by a UK-specific initiative, do stay with us….

Underwriting engines have been around for over 20 years. Initially they were used in head offices, processing application form information keyed in by clerical staff, and avoiding the need for (expensive) underwriters spending time on the more straightforward cases. From there data entry migrated to the point of sale, but still often with processing and decision-making deferred until the information could be uploaded in a head-office environment. But since those early days, use of underwriting engines has grown, and in certain markets, such as the UK and Australia in which specialist medical information is used sparingly, underwriting automation has become…

COVID-19 is an acute, albeit sometimes fatal illness, right? Not necessarily so. While many who become infected by COVID-19 make a full recovery, a significant minority experience persisting symptoms. Indeed, the illness is highly variable in nature, with symptoms ranging from minimal (or even none) to severe respiratory distress and organ failure. In some cases respiratory symptoms may be absent. Risk of severe symptoms, need for hospitalisation and death appear to depend on a number of factors including age, gender, obesity, the presence of co-morbid conditions and ethnicity. The duration of in-patient hospitalisation can vary greatly: recently a man in…

There remains much debate about Coronavirus and the many ways in which it has affected, is affecting and will affect societies: for example, the death tolls so far and in future, ways to suppress its activity, the value of testing, tracing and monitoring, the economic impact of ‘lockdowns’ and whether governments have responded appropriately in a timely manner. It is interesting to compare how countries around the world are doing in their battle to beat the virus. Joseph Lu, working on behalf of the COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group1, has published an analysis and concluded2 that many small countries from Albania…

We have always been fans of tele-interviewing and have authored or co-authored two seminal reports on the subject over the years1,2. Tele-interviews, when carried out by well trained individuals, ideally with a medical, nursing or underwriting background, can bring new and more detailed disclosures than may be the case when applicant is questioned by an agent or broker. Figures from Morgan Ash, a long-standing tele-interview provider in the UK which uses trained nurses to conduct its interviews, claims a significant improvement, bases on analyses, in disclosures and a reduction in the amount of missing information compared with an attending physicians…

The news that a ‘second person’ (see later) has been cleared of HIV infection is a reminder that HIV infection is far from the death sentence it once was. It might also jog our industry’s collective conscience that many HIV-infected individuals are insurable risks and that protection cover might be found for more of them. The first person to become HIV-negative after having been infected was Timothy Brown, the so-called ‘Berlin patient’. Brown, an American citizen, was diagnosed with HIV in 1995 while studying in Berlin and began antiretroviral therapy. In 2006 he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia for…

There has been some pondering within the industry lately about smoking and e-cigarettes and whether the latter deserves more lenient treatment – specifically, should e-cigarette users (or ‘vapers’) be entitled to a reduction on the usual smoker premium surcharge? The dangers of smoking cigarettes, cigars and pipes are well known and well understood. On the face of it, vaping is safer since e-cigarettes deliver nicotine without the dangerous tars and other toxins found in tobacco smoke. However, there are concerns about the safety of the nicotine-containing liquid that is vaporised for inhalation to the lungs. Some individuals have suffered acute…

Our previous article discussed how risks associated with mental illnesses may not always be what one might think in both magnitude and causes of mortality, especially if environmental factors such as socioeconomic status and support networks are taken into account. So how can we underwrite these cases better? How can we reach fair decisions quickly and efficiently? Let’s deal with life and critical illness covers first. For a start, many cases of anxiety and mild depression can be regarded as standard risks, so long as the underwriter is happy that the case is straightforward with no adverse features. Even cases…

Mental health and how it affects employment and commercial relationships has come increasingly under the spotlight recently. And maybe not before time. Somatic (that is, physical) illnesses tend to engender sympathy and understanding. But illnesses of the psyche are somehow in a class of their own – and not in a good way. They run contrary to popular perceptions of what is ‘good’; that is, health, fun and success – the sort of things one shares with friends via social media. Diagnoses like anxiety and depression, on the other hand, imply weakness and failure. Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are difficult…