Swiss Re on emerging risk insights
Swiss Re’s SONAR 2025: New emerging risk insights report identifies new or changed risks that could impact on insurers today and in the future. The report highlights a range of emerging risks, with those most relevant to the life and health insurance sector being: declining consumer trust in institutions and the insurance industry; elevated levels of excess mortality; aging populations; extreme heat events; fungi-adaptations; harm caused by plastics; new technologies in healthcare delivery; rising consumption of ultra-processed foods; workforce gaps and skillset shortages. It’s an interesting read - we’ve picked out some things we think are particularly relevant to the New Zealand market.
With aging populations, fewer and later family formations could lead to less events (such as the birth of a child) that typically spur life insurance purchases.
While NZ is not subject to such extremes of temperature as in other parts of the world, a recent study estimated that 500 children under five are hospitalised for heat-related reasons each year in NZ . Currently 14 heat-related deaths occur in Auckland’s over-65 population annually – with climate change increasing the number of days exceeding 25C, we can expect the number of people dying from heat-related deaths to increase correspondingly.
With fungi adapting to warmer temperatures and the overuse of fungicides leading to more multi-drug-resistant fungal pathogens, there could be an increase in fungal infections and limited medical treatment options for those with fungal infections.
The potential health effects from micro- and nano-plastics and their additives are still being studied, but there is growing research on the negative impacts of plastics on human health.
Swiss Re highlight that innovations like GLP-1 weight-loss medications and the increasing uptake of these drugs should help reduce mortality in the future. Semaglutide (Wegovy/Ozempic) was approved for weight-loss use in New Zealand by Medsafe last month, though it is not Pharmac-funded.
The increasing availability and variety of AI and virtual health services should lead to healthier populations over time, by enabling early detection and preventative interventions. Personalised health monitoring and nudges towards healthier behaviour (a la AIA’s vitality product) will potentially reduce claim frequencies and lead to longer healthspans. Conversely, the digitalisation of medical records and other previously private health information, comes with greater data security and privacy risks.
Research has shown associations between high consumption of ultra-processed foods and elevated health risks, including obesity, type-2 diabetes, depression, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
An aging workforce will contribute to labour and skillset shortages in the healthcare field, which could lead to delays in medical treatment, under-diagnosis and sub-standard levels of care – leading to an increase in morbidity and mortality. Healthcare worker shortages have been in the news regularly in NZ and The Royal NZ College of General Practitioner’s 2022 workforce survey found 64% of specialist GP’s were intending to retire by 2032.
More news:
Fidelity Life roll out this year’s annual product re-accreditation
Financial Advice NZ community of Practice: Central District 17 July
Scheme of Arrangement between Foundation Life and policyholders approved
Russell Hutchinson writes of how insurers could improve awareness
Australian advisers change fee structure, higher revenue and profit