COVID-19

The industry is still wrestling with mortality assumptions related to Covid-19, and how shifts may affect the life insurance underwriting process.

In just a few months’ time, the COVID-19 crisis brought about years of change in the way companies in all sectors and regions do business. According to a new McKinsey Global Survey of executives, their companies have accelerated the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions and of their internal operations by 3 to 4 years. And the share of digital or digitally enabled products in their portfolios has accelerated by a shocking 7 years. The insurance industry is no exception.

COVID-19 has put new underwriting strategies through a brutal test.
 

Understanding the impact of Long COVID has presented any number of difficulties, not only to the medical fraternity but also to insurers. There have been widely varying reports of the prevalence; from 10 to 90%. One pundit estimated between 4.5 and 27 million Americans will experience the effects of Long COVID.
 

Why “secondary” excess mortality and mortality assumption uncertainty is in fact likely to continue for several more years.
 

While the media has reported how COVID-19 impacts the elderly the most, the data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be telling us a more insightful story for middle-aged and younger individuals on the relative to expected mortality rate basis. As such, the experience over the past two years may be instructive for the life insurance industry going forward.
 

Long COVID – One Year On, authored by Munich Re’s Dr. Tim Meagher, was originally published by the Journal of Insurance Medicine.
 

Two years of a worldwide coronavirus pandemic is leaving its imprint on life insurance.
 

SCOR's medical experts discuss the lasting impacts of infection
 

The global pandemic’s toll on cancer diagnoses and what it may mean for the future of US life expectancy