Global Atlantic Financial Group - Leaders Insights Summer 2020 | страница 3

COVID-19 RESPONSE
COVID-19 UNDERWRITING
RESPONSE AND RESOURCES
THE COVID-19 pandemic has tested
the resiliency of businesses, schools,
communities, and most importantly,
family and friends. It’s no exaggeration
to say it has touched almost every
aspect of our lives. As a life insurance
carrier, we’ve had to confront this
new and turbulent underwriting and
mortality environment created by the
pandemic.
Across the industry, initial
communications focused on
accommodations and reassurances
that businesses were continuing to
operate in the new stay-at-home
environment. That quickly evolved.
As one chief underwriter put it,
“Information was coming out by the
hour, by the day, before the ink had even
dried!” Announcements from carriers
included temporary underwriting
adjustments to mitigate the risk
related to age and medical conditions,
reductions of maximum issue age
to as low as 70, and new maximum
allowable ratings and reductions in
internal retention limits, while keeping
auto-bind limits the same. Then came
actions by reinsurers who have the
largest exposure of in-force business
at risk to COVID-19 claims. These
actions included significantly reducing
available capacity on large cases
while eliminating capacity on foreign
national business.
Global Atlantic was not immune to
the effects of the pandemic, and we
made several temporary underwriting
changes as a result of COVID-19,
including:
• Postponing acceptance of all
new applications at age 70 and
over
• Postponing applications for
individuals up to age 69 with a rating
class higher than Table 4
• Individuals with chronic underlying
conditions at higher risk from
COVID-19 (including, but not
limited to, obesity, cardiovascular
disease, diabetes, lung disorders,
cancer, and disorders requiring
immunosuppressive therapy) will be
underwritten more prudently during
this time
We have also lowered the limits on
the amount of annual premium we will
accept on our individual IUL products to
$5 million per year. These changes have
been necessary to ensure we’re properly
managing our mortality risk.
Despite all the focus on managing the
increased mortality risks, some positives
have come out of the pandemic from both
the carrier and consumer standpoints. The
environment has caused an acceleration
of many initiatives that were already
underway within our industry, including
digital underwriting processes, accelerated
underwriting, and use of alternative
underwriting data. To accommodate nonface-to-face
completion of the application
and related forms, carriers began leaning
into their digital offerings, such as
e-application and e-signature processes.
Carriers also began promoting and
expanding their accelerated and seamless
underwriting programs to overcome the
challenges presented by social distancing
when completing an insurance exam
and labs. Lastly, carriers have shown
more willingness to accept alternative
underwriting evidence, including electronic
health, medical, and consumer data in lieu of
traditional exam and lab requirements. So,
it’s not all been doom and gloom, as through
this very challenging environment, carriers
have been forced to explore ways to make
it easier for consumers to purchase life
insurance.
At Global Atlantic, we’ve been actively
focused on the modernization of our own
underwriting processes (even before
the pandemic occurred). This project
is large and will be done in phases, but
the initial phase will include updates to
our accelerated underwriting program,
which we are calling Fast Lane 2.0. We
will leverage more modern underwriting
tools that utilize pharmacy data, medical
data, and consumer data to help improve
our underwriting assessments, which
will ultimately allow for broader age and
coverage ranges. In a later phase, we will
focus on making improvements to the
underwriting process to create a better
end-to-end user experience. These changes
will help us provide you and your clients
with the ability to acquire life insurance
protection in a way that better aligns with
how today’s consumers purchase other
goods and services.
Mike Link,
Sr. VP, Chief Underwriter,
Global Atlantic
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