continuous underwriting

A company using what seems like a fun smartphone game to get you to walk more might be a slippery slope. With access to all that data, what will a big corporation ultimately do with it? This is still new, so the implications are murky.

John Hancock, one of the oldest and largest North American life insurers, will stop underwriting traditional life insurance and instead sell only interactive policies that track fitness and health data through wearable devices and smartphones, the company said on Wednesday.

Is the promise of wearable technology too good to be true? Inclusion of wearables in life insurance products to date has not matched the interest. But advances hold great promise. RGA’s Julianne Callaway explores the power and perils of these promising devices in Digital Insurance. 

Gambling and life insurance – a surprising yet oddly appropriate pair. That’s what I thought as I walked through The Bellagio doors on a sunny, April day in Las Vegas. I wasn’t there to play games of chance though – I was at the 2016 LIMRA Life Insurance Conference to learn about disruptive innovation examples in insurance

Munich Re assessed the effectiveness of physical activity as measured by wearable sensors in stratifying the mortality risk profile of a U.S. population-based dataset provided by Vivametrica. Munich Re examined the dataset, performed classical actuarial mortality analysis and used survival analysis and machine learning techniques to evaluate the extent to which physical activity predicts mortality. 

Presentation by Jordi Posthumus on “The Rise of Mobile Computing and Its Impact on Life Underwriting” delivered at the 47th annual M.U.D. Group Conference.

SCOR Global Life recently trialled wearable technology among its workforce. Here is what happened.

http://www.covermagazine.co.uk/cover/feature/2467421/wearable-technology...

Are the current wellness initiatives which centre on wearable technology the golden fleece that holds out the best prospect of delivering innovative, market-disrupting change to insurance markets on a global scale? Mr Richard Verdin of RGA UK Services Ltd explores.

http://www.rgare.com/knowledgecenter/Pages/wellness-wearables-and-univer...

According to the 2016 Insurance Barometer, 30 percent of consumers are very or extremely likely to consider sharing the data from an activity tracker (Fitbit, Jawbone, etc.) with a life insurance company if they received financial incentives in return for healthy behaviors. Among those who already use a device, willingness to share more than doubles to 65 percent.

http://www.limra.com/Posts/PR/Industry_Trends_Blog/Three_in_Ten_American...

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.

http://www.selectx.co.uk/the-real-digital-health/