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U.S. reinsurance company executives have been trying to spend the past few days selling life insurance company executives on their forecasting powers.
The reinsurance company executives traveled to Las Vegas for the ReFocus 2019 conference, which started Sunday and ended Wednesday.
The American Council of Life Insurers and the Society of Actuaries sponsor the annual conference series to give reinsurance company executives and life insurance company executives a chance to talk.
Reinsurance companies make deals that absorb mortality risk and longevity risk from life insurers. Reinsurers are the life insurers' own insurers.
Many reinsurers also offer life insurers a wide variety of other services, such as policy administration services, and helping with assessing their books of business.
The top-level sponsors of the 2019 conference were Milliman, which is an actuarial consulting firm, and Bermuda International Long Term Insurers and Reinsurers (BILTIR)
The companies in the second sponsorship tier were Athene, Hannover Re and Reinsurance Group of America.
Here's a sampling of what speakers at the conference talked about, drawn from the event website:
1. Insurtech
Many speakers talked about ways life insurers can use new and improved forms of technology, such as genetic analysis, to do a better job of managing their blocks of business.
Dror Katzav of Atidot, for example, said his company has tools that can inhale insurance company data, label and organize the data so that computers can use it, and spit out charts that show interesting information, such as which life insurance policyholders and annuity holders look as if they're likely to let their policies or contracts lapse.
Jon Sabes of Life Epigenetics talked about ways to use information about life insurance insureds' DNA methylation, or genetic markets, to improve longevity estimates. The company has a research pilot that will gather epigenetic data from 1,300 people, along with those people's answers to standard life insurance underwriting questionnaires, their prescription data, and their attending physician statements. The company will use the data to see how epigenetic data can fit in with a real-world life insurance or annuity underwriting operations.
2. Opioid Use
In theory, life insurers, and their reinsurers, might see opioid use as a minor nuisance.
