Category: News and articles

We were fortunate to attend two very good lectures on HIV/AIDS in 2013, one by Dr Daniel Zimmerman of Northwestern Mutual at the annual AHOU meeting, and the other, by…

In marketing (by which we mean ‘running businesses profitably’ and not advertising/promotion, account management or selling stuff) they talk of ‘the four Ps’: Product Price ‘Place’ (ie distribution channel) Promotion.…

The previous article illustrates the need to tailor the ‘underwriting mix’ to the rest of the marketing mix in order to create both an appealing customer proposition (and traditionally an…

Several of the sessions at the ICLAM meeting at the end of May 2013 in Madrid dealt with predicting cardiovascular risk. The ECG, and especially the resting trace, is a…

This was the title of an interesting conference that took place in London in 2013. While it was focused on the UK, a number of the issues addressed are pertinent…

The publication of the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – usually referred to simply as ‘the DSM’ – is due round about the time…

When the applicant knows more than the underwriter there is always a heightened risk of antiselection. In the past people didn’t know much about their health and wellbeing, but their…

Predictive analytics (also referred to as ‘predictive modelling’): is it the future? It is if you listen to firms that are taking a keen interest in, or even specialize in,…

We were musing the other day about how to deal with smoking, pondering matters like: If an applicant says he or she smokes x cigarettes a day, can you believe…

Nowhere in the world is the underwriting process as sophisticated as it is in North America. Nowhere else are underwriting decisions based:   So frequently on laboratory analysis of blood,…