Life

There’s not enough oversight for apps that track everything from people’s fitness routines to their menstrual cycles, bioethicists say.

Insurers are using customers’ social-media posts to determine premiums, inviting the potential for our digital lives to become disingenuous performances.

‘Insurtech’: our inboxes are full of news alerts, and hardly a day passes without a notable insurer or reinsurer somewhere commencing a digital initiative, applying artificial intelligence, partnering with a hi-tech high-flyer or investing in a digital/data/analytics start-up. Insurtech is big these days.

Slides for the presentation at ReFocus 2019, March 10-13, Las Vegas

In this age of amazing medical advances, it seems as though anything broken can be fixed.  In my native South Africa, the surgeon Dr. Christiaan Barnard proved that even defective hearts can be replaced when he performed the first heart transplant in 1967.

Rapid medical advances, as well as growing volumes of health and mortality data, are transforming cancer risk assessment. RGA's Neil Parkin explores our deepening understanding and insurance implications.  

Top industry analysts discuss hot technology issues such as blockchain, insurtech, cybersecurity and more. These present both challenges and opportunities.

Urine drug testing is a cornerstone of the overall testing in proposed insureds and yields a lot of valuable underwriting information. So how long do a lot of drugs stay in the system and at what time frame would they be likely to trigger a positive test?

On 19 January 2019, the New York State Department for Financial Services (DFS) issued a circular letter concerning the use of external consumer data and information sources for life insurance underwriting. This followed a prior notice sent to insurers that the Department was investigating the use of such data for potentially unfair or discriminatory practices.

The life industry finds itself at an inflection point as insurers come under growing pressure to position themselves to embrace genomics and genetic testing. Best's Review explores the underwriting implications of rapid advances in genomics, including research by RGA and King’s College London into the risk prediction potential of polygenic risk scores for incidence and death from breast cancer and coronary artery disease.