The Good, the Bad and the Healthy: The Medical Underwriting Revolution in the Defined Benefit De-Risking Market

Abstract

This report attempts to assess the advantages and disadvantages of medical underwriting and its potential impact on the bulk annuity market generally. We start by looking at the theoretical justifications for using underwriting, in terms of whether more data leads to lower prices on average, both in the wider context of insurance and then as applied to medical underwriting in bulk annuity policies in particular. The rest of the report then discusses the evolution of medically-underwritten bulk annuities to date and the competitive pressures currently operating in the marketplace; the factors needing to be considered when deciding whether to purchase a medically-underwritten bulk annuity; the processes involved in a medically-underwritten transaction, in terms of collecting the data and deciding which insurer to work with; and the potential evolution of the bulk annuity market generally in the foreseeable future, and the impact of medical underwriting within that.