Tag: underwriting

Mitigating the increasing effects of climate change has become a top priority for South African insurers who have collectively paid billions of Rands in related damages over the past five to 10 years. The increasing frequency and severity of severe weather events – such as heavy rainfall and resultant flooding – threatens the sustainability of insurers who must protect the integrity of their balance sheets to continue paying claims for years to come.

Auto insurance is leading the charge with the adoption of dynamic pricing, which entails developing policies that are more cost-effective for low-risk customers and using a different premium model for high-risk policyholders. There is significant potential for life and health insurers to capitalise on this momentum and embrace this model within subsets of their product offerings.

In the past three years, we’ve seen consumers demanding unprecedented levels of online experiences across most industries. Unfortunately, the bad guys go where the money is. As online activity booms, we’ve seen the number of suspected digital fraud attempts in the financial services sector increase by 30% between 2019 and 2022.

Ask any sectional title body corporate what keeps them awake at night, and the recurring issue of maintenance – and who’s responsible for it – is most likely the answer. The solutions are often far from straightforward. According to the Sectional Titles Act, the body corporate is responsible for the maintenance of the sectional title’s common property, which includes the outside of buildings, roofs, common gardens and parking bays, driveways, security systems, and shared amenities.

The importance of planning your finances to ensure that you protect your family’s future for a time when you or your loved ones won’t be around anymore is immeasurable. We believe in integrated advice, and one needs to consider the importance of protecting their family should the worst happen.

The adoption of accelerated, or automated underwriting, which uses advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to evaluate risk and underwrite life insurance, has been limited to date. This can partly be attributed to insurers cautiously rolling out automated decision-making, opting instead for small-scale improvements to risk frameworks.

An application programming interface (Open API) provides standards for how different software communicate with each other. Taking it a step further, an Open API specification (OAS) allows both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of a service without requiring access to its source code.

In our 2022 Insurance State of the Market report, we have unpacked key global insurance market trends as well as local trends that are affecting the insurance market in a volatile and unpredictable world.

You’ve most likely heard the term ‘underwriting’ mentioned in insurance ads and weren’t sure what it meant and why it’s important. Underwriting is a key element of life, critical illness, and disability insurance. It forms the basis of what premiums you pay and what you are covered for.

The life insurance and annuity industry proved resilient in 2021, even in the face of the many challenges associated with COVID-19. It’s now a given that the pandemic forced insurers to adopt digital technologies and operate more in the digital space. This digital shift is the source of the industry’s resilience as more companies, and customers, enjoy the benefits of their digital transformations.