Description: The life insurance industry has experienced dramatic changes since the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020. Growing competition, a rise in online shopping, and the impact of COVID-19 have all led to an increase in contactless and completely digitized life insurance options. At Policygenius, we wanted to dig deeper into these big industry changes and better understand how they affect life insurance buyers. What our 2022 life insurance trend report found was a changing industry, making tremendous strides, and creating even better pricing and policy options for customers.

Description: New digital data known as alternative data is everywhere. Our industry has seen the financial, and hi-tech industries leverage new digital data to expand their key offerings and core services. From the lens of the global life and health industry, new digital data is still searching to be further understood. Risk assessment is a current focus area for using alternative data. A key question is even though risk assessment has always been data-driven, can it now move to the next level with the arrival of this alternative data. Can we use alternative data to make the risk assessment process quicker, cheaper, or faster thereby driving more sales and better conversion rates. It is an exciting time! With the increased adoption of health and well-being apps, data such as physical activity, nutrition, sleep, and mental wellness is now readily available. Expanded data such as digital biomarkers, IoT data, electronic health records and many more can also be accessed. However, how to effectively implement alternative data remains a challenge across the industry. We firmly believe it is, and will continue to be, imperative to take a structured approach to alternative data through a set of key considerations and a framework of principles.

Description: Chairperson’s column discussing the recent activities of the SOA’s Reinsurance Section.

Description: A high-level summary of the results of Munich Re's recent Accelerated Underwriting Survey

Description: The SOA, LIMRA and TAI jointly announce a new research project focusing on life insurance impact from COVID-19.

Description: The SOA Research Institute engaged Milliman to perform a study examining life insurer practices on accelerated underwriting and how COVID-19 has impacted them. This effort included a separate outreach to actuaries working for twelve different state insurance departments. At the time of this report, three responses to our regulatory survey had been received. Therefore, the results of the three-question survey are discussed in broad terms, rather than using numerical measurements.

Description: Session 176: The Future of Medical Records in Underwriting

Description: The limited availability of life and protection cover for people living with certain serious health conditions is starting to become a critical issue for insurers. The public perception is that insurers simply don’t offer cover, or that it is difficult to source affordable, tailored cover. This article discusses the considerations when trying to improve access to insurance.

Description: Essay reforming healthcare where participants have a vested interest in reaching the best answer.

Description: Big data and predictive models have disrupted the life insurance new business and underwriting processes over the past few years. How did we get here? What does the future hold? This session will review the lessons learned from the evolutionary process and discuss what the potential next steps are in this journey. Are real time fully underwritten decisions an achievable goal?