Description: This research report examines the ban of the use of genetic testing information in life insurance mortality.

Description: This is a report on Phase 2 of a research project on the role of automated systems in life insurance underwriting. This paper discusses: 1. How and why companies are using automation to make underwriting decisions. 2. Its impact upon operational efficiency, sales, and retention. 3. The quality of risk selection produced by automated systems. 4. Cultural acceptance of increased automation in underwriting. 5. Challenges insurers must overcome to implement and maintain automated underwriting.

Description: This report summarizes the results of a Delphi study to identify and debate possible new approaches or Blue Ocean Strategies to acquiring business by life insurers.

Description: Topics will include the tricorder, telomeres and more

Description: As companies implement PBR, this article outlines challenges regarding the treatment of accelerated underwriting under VM-20 and in light of future innovation.

Description: Experts from both the direct and reinsurance side of the table will provide an overview of final expense products and their key features, as well as share experiences that have informed best practices when designing, selling, managing, monitoring and reinsuring these products. Trends in distribution, underwriting tools and other competitive factors will be considered through the lens of managing risk while remaining competitive in the market.

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

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

Description: Consumer groups fear that the use of genetic testing information in insurance underwriting might lead to the creation of an underclass of individuals who cannot obtain insurance. Thus, these groups want to ban insurance companies from accessing genetic test results. Insurers contend that such a ban might lead to adverse selection that could threaten their financial solvency. To investigate the potential effect of adverse selection in a term life insurance market, a discrete-time, discrete-state, Markov chain is used to track the evolution of 12 closed cohorts of women, differentiated by family history of breast and ovarian cancer and age-at-issue of a 20-year annually renewable term life insurance policy. The insurance demand behavior of these women is tracked, incorporating elastic demand for insurance. During the 20-year period, women may get tested for BRCA 1/2 mutations. Each year, the insurer calculates profits/losses to date and expected future benefit payouts which determines the following year’s premium schedule. At the end of each policy year, women can change their life insurance benefit, influenced by their testing status and premium changes. Adverse selection could result from differentiated: 1. benefits following test results, 2. lapse rates according to test results, and 3. reactions to price increases. It is concluded that with realistic estimates of behavioral parameters, adverse selection should be a manageable problem for insurers. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 2004, Vol. 1.

Description: This article discusses new tools to underwrite faster, cheaper and better in order to be more profitable and also market to the middle market.