Life and death
South Africans’ rising insurance risk
In the face of improved life expectancy and an increasing burden of disease, an overemphasis on life insurance over ‘survival’ cover may be detrimental to South Africans
11 July 2019 - 05:00
South Africans may be living longer — but they’re getting sicker and spending more years in poor health, recent claims statistics from some of SA’s big life insurers suggest. Problematically, South Africans tend not to be properly insured for these rising health risks: life cover, which pays out only on death, remains the dominant long-term insurance product.
In rand value, payouts for death still far exceed those for "survival" claims at Sanlam, Liberty and Momentum — three of SA’s big insurers. In 2018, life claims for Sanlam accounted for R3.25bn (83%) of its total R3.9bn long-term insurance payouts...
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