Tag: pandemic

Trends in Life Insurance 2022: How the Industry Has Changed

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.soa.org/sections/reinsurance/reinsurance-newsletter/2022/april/rsn-2022-04-gambhir/

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Growing popularity in no-medical-exam life insurance products has had one expected outcome: More life insurance policies with accelerated underwriting options available in the marketplace. For example, Policygenius offered just three accelerated underwriting options in 2020. In 2021, that number more than doubled to seven, and more options will likely be available in 2022.

Additionally, while such policies had historically only been available to applicants who were young and in good health, the competitive market has prompted more widespread availability. Now, applicants across all health classes can get no-medical-exam policies.

While no-medical-exam policies tend to be about the same cost as fully underwritten policies, applicants tend to favor them even when they are more expensive due to the convenience and expedited turnaround time.

Author(s): Nupur Gambhir

Publication Date: April 2022

Publication Site: Reinsurance News, SOA

Inside Nebraska’s Surprisingly Effective Covid Strategy

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/22/nebraska-covid-response-pete-ricketts-00026993

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This conversation about protecting hospitals, back in the era when New Yorkers were still being encouraged to go to restaurants, well before the coasts’ contagion began closing in on the Midwest in earnest, helped define what became, by some measures, one of the most effective and balanced Covid responses in the United States. Ricketts is a mandate-shunning Republican who runs a heavily Republican and rural state with a middling vaccination rate — factors that have been linked to worse pandemic health outcomes in other states. He never ordered a statewide shutdown when 43 other governors, Democrats and Republicans, did so; he has stood against, or even supported lawsuits over, local mask requirements; he has told state agencies not to comply with federal vaccine mandates and gotten scolded by the U.S. secretary of defense for objecting to such requirements for the National Guard. And yet by the fall of last year, when POLITICO crunched the data of state pandemic responses on a combination of health, economic, social and educational factors, one state came out with the best average: Nebraska.

The state had the best economic performance of any in the pandemic up to that point, and its students, according to available data, appear to have suffered little to no learning loss. Whereas many states saw a trade-off between health and wealth in the pandemic — often corresponding to more-restrictive Democratic leadership and less-restrictive Republican leadership, respectively — Nebraska also scored above the national average for health outcomes POLITICO evaluated last year (20th of 50 states). Nebraska was the first state to accumulate a 120-day stockpile of PPE in the nationwide scramble for supplies; was a national leader in opening schools; and was among the quickest getting federal aid to small businesses. As of now, its cumulative pandemic death toll per capita is near the lowest of all 50 states, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. This, however, is grading on a hideous curve in a country that hasn’t managed the pandemic well in general: More than 4,000 Nebraskans have lost their lives to Covid. Lawler of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, who helped design the state’s early Covid response but has since grown critical of Nebraska’s approach, notes that South Korea has 14 times lower per capita Covid mortality than Nebraska. “Nobody,” he told me via text, “should be patting themselves on the back for doing 14 [times] worse.”

Author(s): Kathy Gilsinan

Publication Date: 22 April 2022

Publication Site: Politico

2021 U.S. Mortality News Explainer: Life Expectancy, Death Rates, and More

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/2021-us-mortality-news-explainer?s=w

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Here’s a graph for 1999 through the provisional 2021 result (as of 3 April 2022 data from CDC WONDER):

You can see the crude rate is higher than the age-adjusted rate for most of the years, and that’s due to the aging of the population. Basically, the Boomers have been getting older, and their older ages (and higher mortality compared to where they were in 2000), have an effect on how many deaths there are overall — thus the crude rate continually increasing as there are more and more old people.

However, until the pandemic hit, the age-adjusted death rate in general decreased, though we had a few years in the 2010s in which the age-adjusted death rate did increase… and yes, that was due to drug overdoses. We will get to that in a bit.

In any case, both the crude rate and age-adjusted rates did jump up by a lot in 2020 due to the pandemic, and COVID deaths were even higher in 2021. But there were other causes of death also keeping mortality rates high in 2021.

I will point out that even with all this extra mortality, the age-adjusted death rate in 2021 is still below where it was in 1999.

That does not mean things are hunky-dory.

This is one of the dangers of collapsing death rates into a single number. The increase in death rates has differed by age group, and it has been far worse for teens and young adults through even young middle-age than it has been for the oldest adults.

Yes, COVID has killed the oldest adults the most, but their death rates have increased the least. It’s all relative.

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 13 Apr 2022

Publication Site: STUMP at substack

Baby bust: economic stimulus helps births rebound from coronavirus pandemic

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ft.com/content/32436917-00b8-447d-8d6c-41f4be72b03f?accessToken=zwAAAYA7wc2Wkc8yQ2kXALhEfdONbEH0vnKwPw.MEYCIQCFBH5WrakQgRbrgONBrhQRQnrxaYYTg1X8IXTM2IkKsgIhAP6ebnRh2QH5MftGwbJQho_8W3OrJhT_fi3J_mwJO02F&sharetype=gift?token=1738330e-13c3-4b99-8852-a179ac664411

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The number of births in advanced economies has largely rebounded to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, a Financial Times analysis shows, a recovery that experts say was partly because of stimulus policies deployed to mitigate the economic impact of the crisis.

Births began to fall sharply in late 2020 after Covid-19 took hold and people were confined to their homes in lockdown, worsening an already perilous demographic trend of population decline in wealthy nations.

The trend mirrored drops during the 1918 flu pandemic, the Great Depression and the global financial crisis in 2008. But an analysis of national data shows a rapid rebound in most developed countries.

…..

The global fertility rate peaked at five in 1960 and has since been in freefall. As a result, demographers believe that, after centuries of booming population growth, the world is on the brink of a natural population decline.

According to a Lancet paper published in 2020, the world’s population will peak at 9.7bn in about 2064, dropping to 8.7bn around the end of the century. About 23 nations can expect their populations to halve by 2100: Japan’s population will fall from a peak of 128mn in 2017 to less than 53mn; Italy’s from 61mn to 28mn.

Low fertility rates set off a chain of economic events. Fewer young people leads to a smaller workforce, hitting tax receipts, pensions and healthcare contributions.

Author(s): Federica Cocco, Lyman Stone

Publication Date: 18 Apr 2022

Publication Site: Financial Times

Ten Most Dangerous Risks for Insurers

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://mcusercontent.com/991483cca1a8e7eb050cff8bd/files/7dfc14f1-eaa5-5658-64a3-54f5c5e1955f/1Q2022_SRSE_Dangerous_Risks.pdf

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This year we had record participation with
over 250 insurance professionals taking part.
This is the fifth iteration of this poll and 2022
shows some consistency along with some very
new risks. Inflation, Employee retention and
Ability to hire new employees are three new
risks to the top of this poll, but they should
not be surprises.

….

2. INFLATION
Up very sharply – Previously #52
Prices are rising faster than they have since the
1980s in most of the developed world. Insurers
will be hit with a double whammy as the real
value of invested assets decays and the cost of
doing business and claims costs increases at the
same time.

EMPLOYEE RETENTION
Not on the list previously
The Great Resignation makes the headlines.
COVID seems to have accelerated the timeline
for the inevitable wave of Boomer retirements.
Also concerning are the numbers leaving due to
health care burnout and caregiver
responsibilities. The problem for insurers is
figuring out how to respond to the massive loss
of experience.

Author(s): Actuarial Risk Management

Publication Date: Accessed 8 Mar 2022

Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker?utm_campaign=a.coronavirus-special-edition&utm_medium=email.internal-newsletter.np&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=20220219&utm_content=ed-picks-article-link-6&etear=nl_special_6&utm_campaign=a.coronavirus-special-edition&utm_medium=email.internal-newsletter.np&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2/19/2022&utm_id=1055648

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As covid-19 has spread around the world, people have become grimly familiar with the death tolls that their governments publish each day. Unfortunately, the total number of fatalities caused by the pandemic may be even higher, for several reasons. First, the official statistics in many countries exclude victims who did not test positive for coronavirus before dying—which can be a substantial majority in places with little capacity for testing. Second, hospitals and civil registries may not process death certificates for several days, or even weeks, which creates lags in the data. And third, the pandemic has made it harder for doctors to treat other conditions and discouraged people from going to hospital, which may have indirectly caused an increase in fatalities from diseases other than covid-19.

Publication Date: Accessed 21 Feb 2022

Publication Site: The Economist

American Academy of Actuaries: Some Estimates of Pandemic-Related Life Expectancy Changes Can Be Misleading

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/american-academy-of-actuaries-some-estimates-of-pandemic-related-life-expectancy-changes-can-be-misleading-301481737.html

Excerpt:

The American Academy of Actuaries has released a new public policy paper and issue brief cautioning that clarification may be needed regarding estimated life expectancy showing significant decreases in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Reports of considerable decreases in life expectancy driven by COVID-19 may certainly garner attention, but they can potentially be misleading when based on a technical measure that assumes heightened pandemic mortality will persist indefinitely,” said Academy Senior Pension Fellow Linda K. Stone. “Service to the public is core to the American Academy of Actuaries’ mission, and we would be remiss not to share the actuarial profession’s expertise to help the public interpret such reports.”

The Academy’s new Essential Elements paper, Clarifying Misunderstanding of Life Expectancy and COVID-19, which is based on a December 2021 issue brief developed by the Academy’s Pension Committee, Interpreting Pandemic-Related Decreases in Life Expectancy, cites the potential of confusion arising from recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates of significant life expectancy decreases primarily due to COVID-19. The CDC used a measurement known as “period life expectancy” to estimate life expectancy changes in 2020, publishing in July 2021 a preliminary estimate of a 1.5-year year-over-year decrease, and in December 2021 a final estimate of a 1.8-year decrease. However, the CDC’s methodology and the estimated decreases assume that the heightened mortality of the COVID-19 pandemic during the 2020 year will persist indefinitely—an unlikely scenario.

Author(s): American Academy of Actuaries

Publication Date: 14 Feb 2022

Publication Site: PRNEWSWIRE

Interpreting Pandemic-Related Decreases in Life Expectancy

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.actuary.org/node/14837

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Period life expectancy measures demonstrate fluctuations that reflect events that influenced mortality in this particular period.14 For example, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 resulted in a dramatic decrease in period life expectancy, which was more than offset by an increase in period life expectancy the next year. A male baby born in 1917 had a period life expectancy of 52.2 years, while a male baby born in 1918 had a period life expectancy of only 45.3 years—a reduction of almost 7 years.15 The following year, a male newborn had a period life expectancy of 54.2, an increase of almost 9 years over the period life expectancy calculated in 1918 for a newborn male. These changes are much larger than those seen thus far with COVID-19, demonstrating the relative severity of that earlier pandemic relative to the current one.

It is instructive to review the impact of calculating life expectancies on a cohort basis, rather than a period basis, for these three cohorts of male newborns in the late 1910s. Using mortality rates published by the SSA for years after 1917, for a cohort of 1917 male newborns, the average life span was 59.4; for the 1918 cohort, average life span was 60.0; and for 1919, it was 61.5. Even these differences are heavily influenced by the fact that the 1917 and 1918 cohorts had to survive the high rates of death during 1918, while the 1919 cohort did not.

If both period and cohort life expectancy are measured as of 1920 for each of these groups (the 3-year-old children who were born in 1917, 2-year-old children who were born in 1918 and 1-year-old children who were born in 1919), differences are observed in these measures as they narrow substantially because the high rates of mortality during 1918 have no effect on those who survived to 1920. This is summarized in the table below.

Author(s): Pension Committee

Publication Date: December 2021

Publication Site: American Academy of Actuaries

Credit FAQ: Understanding S&P Global Ratings’ Request For Comment On Proposed Changes To Its Insurer Risk-Based Capital Adequacy Methodology

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/research/articles/211206-credit-faq-understanding-s-p-global-ratings-request-for-comment-on-proposed-changes-to-its-insurer-risk-bas-12183007

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The main reasons for the proposed changes to our criteria include:

Incorporating recent data and experience since our last update of the insurance capital model criteria;

Enhancing global consistency in our risk-based capital (RBC) analysis;

Increasing risk differentiation in capital requirements where relevant and material to our analysis, as well as reducing complexity where it does not add analytical value;

Improving the transparency and usability of our methodology, such as with our proposal to supersede 10 related criteria articles; and

Supporting our ability to respond to changes in macroeconomic and market conditions by introducing sector and industry variables.

A list of changes to our proposed criteria appears in the RFC and in the appendix of this article.

Author(s): 

Simon Ashworth, Ali Karakuyu, Carmi Margalit, Eunice Tan, Sebastian Dany, Olivier J Karusisi,	Ron A Joas, Mark Button

Publication Date: 6 Dec 2021

Publication Site: Standard & Poors

Covid-19, Endemic or Not, Will Still Make Us Poorer

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-endemic-or-not-will-still-make-us-poorer-11642608213

Excerpt:

Endemic Covid-19 could thus become a lasting “supply shock” that degrades how much economies can produce, similar to the surge in oil prices in the 1970s. In October, the International Monetary Fund estimated global output this year would still be 3% lower than it had projected in 2019, with Western Europe and Latin America showing much bigger hits than China and Japan, where Covid-19’s toll has been much lower.

The U.S. is an exception: Output in the last quarter of 2021 was roughly back to its pre-pandemic trend. But the economy, distorted and disrupted by Covid-19, is struggling to sustain this level of output, as the surge in inflation to 7% demonstrates.

Covid-19 might have boosted efficiency in some industries by speeding up digitization and adoption of remote work. Goldman Sachs economists estimate this delivered a 3% to 4% boost to U.S. productivity.

But some of the shift to remote operations is involuntary, and some of the rise in productivity might reflect an overworked workforce. Indeed, the pandemic has left the labor force smaller, sicker and less happy. Absences due to illness among employed workers have averaged 50% higher in the last two years. In early January, nearly 12 million people weren’t working because they were sick with Covid-19, caring for someone with coronavirus, or concerned about getting or spreading the disease, according to a regular Census Bureau survey. The figure hasn’t been below 4 million since June 2020.

In the past year, workers have reported declining satisfaction with their wages and a rising “reservation wage,” that is, how much they would have to be paid to accept a new job, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This might reflect inflation, changed expectations, or stress due to Covid-19 testing, masks and vaccine mandates, or their absence.

For employers, this makes it much harder to attract the necessary staff. Nursing homes have boosted hourly wages 14% since the start of the pandemic, yet staffing has plummeted 12%, impairing their ability to accept new patients. Such shortages impose a cost that doesn’t show up in gross domestic product.

Author(s): Greg Ip

Publication Date: 19 Jan 2022

Publication Site: WSJ

To Fight Covid, We Need to Think Less Like Doctors

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/opinion/covid-america.html

Excerpt:

If we’re trying to prevent Covid surges and end the pandemic, then we need to center the population in our thinking. Health authorities need to get tools like rapid tests and better masks to as many people as possible, especially those who are more likely to spread disease, even if they’re at low risk themselves. People need to be persuaded or incentivized to vaccinate to protect others.

If you are sick, even with severe Covid, you want someone with a doctor’s viewpoint caring for you. America, however, is not a patient. And we’d all be better off, as a society and as individuals, if those in control of our country’s health stopped thinking of it that way.

Author(s): Aaron E. Carroll

Publication Date: 14 Jan 2022

Publication Site: NYT

5 States Where Dying People Are Most Likely to Be Working Age

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/12/21/5-states-where-dying-people-are-the-most-likely-to-be-working-age/

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Whatever the omicron variant of COVID-19 does to U.S. life insurance insurance claims, the delta variant and its siblings have been continuing to drive up the number of deaths of working-age Americans.

Some life and health insurers reported that an enormous surge of COVID-19 deaths appeared in September and then seemed to end quickly.

A look at weekly death count data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, from 2015 through 2019, about 12,900 people ages 25 through 64 died, from all causes, in a typical week.

In September, the number climbed more than 7,000, or more than 50%, over the median.

That total includes both people killed directly by COVID-19 and by the effects of the pandemic on the health care system, the economy and U.S. society as a whole.

Author(s): Allison Bell

Publication Date: 3 Jan 2022

Publication Site: Think Advisor