IFSA has released details of the first life insurance industry claims experience investigation for ten years.
The investigation focused on assessing the claims experience for individual policies for Death, TPD and Trauma insurance across Australia’s life insurance industry.
Conducted in conjunction with KPMG, the investigation considered claims and underwriting records from 15 insurance companies for the 2007 year. Almost four million policies were assessed, together with 6,420 claims from 2007.
Key findings from the investigation include:
- The mortality of the insured population has continued to improve over the last 10 years (consistent with population trends)
- Men and older people experienced higher rates of improvement than females
- The death rates for women continued to be significantly lower than men, but the gap is narrowing
- Smokers continue to experience significantly higher rates of death than non smokers of the same age and gender
- There is wide variation in mortality experience between policy types and between companies
- The Trauma incidence rate has fallen significantly compared to 10 years ago
- Cancer continues to be the dominating cause of claims, especially for women
Commenting on the investigation findings, IFSA CEO, Richard Gilbert, said “Having access to the same data for the whole industry allows us to learn a lot about the health, well-being and longevity of ordinary Australians”.
“The more we know about the industry’s experience, the better the industry will be able to develop new products and price those products in the future. This will be of major assistance (to) the industry in making life insurance products more accessible to Australians,” said Mr Gilbert.
IFSA and KPMG are already collecting data from the life insurance companies for a further update that will allow completion early next year of a new Standard Table of industry experience.
