Our thoughts

We have written before about wearables from a number of different angles, including Gary’s perspective as an owner in August 2015. Time for an update. It’s now almost eighteen months since I bought the Fitbit HR. Let’s start with some of my numbers: Steps taken: ranged from a daily low of 5,500 to a highest of 35,000 in a day (which included a gym visit and a full-on day of sightseeing in New York). 36 holes of golf in a day results in around 28,000. Average daily steps around 15,000. Miles walked: lowest day 5.3 miles, highest day 24.5 miles;…

Do you know a Jigglypuff from a Squirtle? If not then you may have missed one of the biggest things of 2016. Pokémon GO was one of the most popular apps of 2016 with over 500 million downloads. It is a free, location-based, augmented reality game developed by Niantic in collaboration with Nintendo through the Pokémon company. Players use the GPS capability of their mobile device to find, capture and battle virtual creatures called Pokémon. These appear on the screen as though they were in the same location as the player who appears as an avatar on the real world…

In our articles on wearables and insurance products we highlight that some insurers, in addition to the step count measured by a wearable device, also use sleep duration as one of their criteria for policyholders to gain premium discounts. Sleep plays a vital role in mental and physical well-being, quality of life and safety. Sleep helps the brain to function correctly and during sleep the brain prepares for the following day. A good night’s sleep aids the ability to learn and concentrate, while not enough sleep can affect later brain activity leading to reduced creativity and decision-making. Sleep deficiency can…

So far in our articles we have been pretty positive about all aspects of e-health, digital health, e-medicine, wearable devices, etc, and what these will bring. And of course Gary is a pretty enthusiastic Fitbit wearer. But there are a few potential ‘trip hazards’ with underwriting significance. Are wearables really going to be a rich source – or even a reasonably useful source – of data for risk evaluation purposes? For a start, these devices are not very accurate. Can something on your wrist really make a decent job of totalling your step count and recording your pulse? They are…

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has just published a study the findings of which suggest that replacing saturated fats with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid does not reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD)1. Using data from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment (MCE) which was a double-blind randomised trial conducted in the late 1960s/early 1970s, researchers found that linoleic-rich vegetable oil effectively reduced cholesterol levels but without any corresponding reduction in CHD or all-cause mortality. In fact, participants who had a greater reduction in blood cholesterol had a higher, rather than lower, risk of death: there was a 22%…

Maybe this is a sign of how far rules engines have come. Historically an insurer’s underwriting philosophy was documented in an underwriting manual, provided by a reinsurer or produced by the company itself. Sometimes the reinsurer’s philosophy would be supplemented by variations drawn up by the insurer and stored on the underwriting intranet or on paper memos. Then underwriting engines came along and the job began of producing a rule set in the engine that reflected the underwriting philosophy. Obviously it’s not quite as simple as that because the roles of an engine and of a manual can be quite…

The process of life and disability underwriting varies from market to market. Those variations as they exist today have been driven by the prevalence of risk factors and the availability of reliable risk information, and not a little by history and culture (of consumers and of the industry itself) too. That differences in practice and process will persist is certain, as is that markets will develop at varying pace. But one cannot help but wonder whether underwriting is on the cusp of a real revolution. That revolution will be driven by ‘predictive modelling’, by which we mean the use of…

Yes, another article on data and technology. We make no apology for this: it seems to be the subject of the moment within our industry (no bad thing) and we ourselves believe it is something for which insurers, reinsurers and distributors – indeed all stakeholders – need to have a strategy. Technology and its implications – and they are far-reaching – should be firmly on your radar. First, consider some of the things happening now or gathering pace in the background: ‘23andme’ (www.23andme.com): genetic profiling for US$99. Following a ruling by the US Food and Drugs Administration 23andme no longer…

Gary has now had his Fitbit HR for about three months and, as promised, here is an update. As I reported before, the device really does show how much variation there is in my activity levels. It captures steps taken, miles walked, calories burned, heart rate, minutes of activity and sleep pattern. The software that comes with it gives the ability to download data on a monthly basis, so here are some statistics from my first three months in a few key areas: Steps taken – ranged from a daily low of 5,500 to a highest of 31,000 in a…

Gary is now the proud owner of a Fitbit. Read on to find out what he thinks of it and wearable technology in general. It has been difficult to attend an underwriting conference over the last two or three years without hearing about ‘wearable technology’, ‘personalised health’, ‘wellness programmes’ or similar. Alongside these have been discussions about ‘big data’, ‘predictive modelling’ and ‘predictive analytics’, and the potential uses of alternative data sources in the underwriting process for greater accuracy or efficiency. A subject that gets a lot of airtime is wearable technology and how this might be used. Keen to…