Group risk life insurers at greater risk of Covid-19 provision hits
The insurers have greater exposure to higher earning older executives who are at greater risk of dying from Covid-19
Insurers who specialise in providing group risk life cover to corporates are likely to take bigger mortality provision hits in the wake of the third wave of Covid-19 infections as they will inherently have greater exposure to older executives more at risk from the virus.
That is the view of Tiaan Kotze, managing executive of Liberty Corporate, who says, based on the claims the company is seeing, the virus is disproportionately affecting executives aged 55 years and older, which is in line with pandemic mortality statistics seen globally. Given that most group risk life insurers typically pay out between two and four times the pensionable salary of policyholders in the event of death, insurers with larger group life books will naturally have greater exposure to older, higher earning executives. That is likely to translate into larger mortality claims in rand terms, even though the absolute number of claims may be more moderate...
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