Our thoughts

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…

Elsewhere we write about gamification (using game design techniques to obtain and maintain customer engagement). The proposition offered by Vitality Life and Vitality Health in the UK is owned by South Africa’s Discovery Life. Recently rebranded from PruProtect and PruHealth, these firms replicate their parent company’s innovative approach to product design and customer engagement whilst also collecting a lot of useful data about customers. Vitality market individual life, critical illness, disability income and health insurance products. Critical illness has been a feature of many markets worldwide, and the well established principle is the payment of a lump sum on diagnosis…

Consumers are becoming increasingly knowledgeable and engaged with technology. They are becoming more and more comfortable with researching and purchasing on-line. Just as retailers are working hard to make their technological interaction with customers more productive, insurers should do the same. Gamification is the use of game elements and design techniques for non-game-type problems. The theory goes that by using elements used in designing games, activities that might normally be dull and unexciting can be brought to life and become more engaging. It has become increasingly common in consumer culture and is used in many industries to increase customer engagement…