If you work at an insurance company, I need your help ASAP
Please consider joining a new dedicated substack to discuss the rise in insurance claims in H2 of 2021
I think I found a way to end the debate about vaccine safety.
It turns out, the stats from insurance companies are devastating.
If you work at an insurance company, I need your help ASAP.
Please read this article.
Thanks.
IT'S IN THE SEC FILINGS!!
I know someone who works in life insurance. I asked him if there was an increase in claims due to mortality in 2021 and he said it's not out yet, but you can look up the quarterly filings (so data through 9/30/21). These filings are all available for free to the public on the SEC's EDGAR filing service. You'll search the companies name and then look for 10-K (annual report, so you can get 2019, 2018, etc data) and then 10-Q for quarterly data (so you can compare the nine months through the end of Sept.) It can be tricky searching for a company because they have trusts, holding companies, etc, so search the name and keep clicking on the different entities until you find 10-Qs and 10-Ks.
Using Met life as an example:
1. Go here: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=0001099219
2. Click on "10-K and 10-Q" in the Selected Filings section (right side)
3. Click on 10-Q Quarterly report [Sections 13 or 15(d)] with a filing date of 11/9/21. "November 9, 2021 - 10-Q: Quarterly report for quarter ending September 30, 2021"
4. Click "Menu" upper left, then "Open at html" because their new viewing platform is crap.
5. Once you're in the document, CTR-F "underwriting". This is the sauce. It took me a while to find where they hide it, but it's in the underwriting section (because they're underwriting human beings, not loans, etc like other companies).
On page 112 (US segment for the nine months ending 9/30/21 compared with the nine months ending 9/30/20:
"Underwriting and Other Insurance Adjustments. Unfavorable mortality in our Group Benefits business resulted in a decrease in adjusted earnings of $587 million. This was primarily driven by: (i) increases in both incidence and severity in both COVID-19 and core claims across our life businesses; and (ii) unfavorable results in our accidental death & dismemberment business due to lower incidence in the prior period as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Favorable mortality in our RIS business, including the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic, resulted in an increase in adjusted earnings of $73 million, driven by our pension risk transfer, specialized benefit resource and structured settlement businesses, partially offset by unfavorable results in our institutional income annuity business. Unfavorable claims experience, partially offset by the impact of growth in our Group Benefits business, resulted in a $43 million decrease in adjusted earnings, primarily due to: (i) unfavorable claims experience in our group disability business; and (ii) unfavorable dental results, as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which limited availability of services and reduced utilization in the prior period, partially offset by: (i) the impact of the acquisition of Versant Health on our vision business; (ii) favorable claims experience in the individual disability business; and (iii) the impact of business growth in our accident & health business. Refinements to certain insurance and other liabilities in both periods resulted in a $4 million increase in adjusted earnings."
They're saying that part of these "unfavorable" results (ie we had to pay out a bunch of money because people either died or became disabled) is because services weren't available in 2020, so people delayed treatment until 2021, and now they're playing catch-up. I'll let you be the judge of whether that's telling the whole story.
However, in the consolidated section (all across the world, page 108) has this:
"Underwriting, Actuarial Assumption Review and Other Insurance Adjustments. Unfavorable underwriting resulted in an $850 million decrease in adjusted earnings and reflected impacts from the COVID-19 Pandemic. This was primarily driven by unfavorable mortality in our U.S. and Latin America segments, coupled with unfavorable claims experience in our EMEA and U.S. segments. The favorable change from our annual actuarial assumption reviews resulted in a net increase of $63 million in adjusted earnings. Changes in operational, biometric and economic assumptions were less unfavorable in the current period when compared to the prior period. Refinements to certain insurance and other liabilities in both periods resulted in a $43 million increase in adjusted earnings. Dividend scale reductions, as well as run-off in MLIC’s closed block, contributed to lower dividend expenses of $82 million and lower associated DAC amortization of $84 million, which increased adjusted earnings."
The key sentences there are: "The favorable change from our annual actuarial assumption reviews resulted in a net increase of $63 million in adjusted earnings. Changes in operational, biometric and economic assumptions were less unfavorable in the current period when compared to the prior period. Refinements to certain insurance and other liabilities in both periods resulted in a $43 million increase in adjusted earnings."
So they updated their actuarial tables to assume more people are going to die or get injured/disabled, thus allowing them to roll over some of the expected payouts, thus adding money back in to offset the "unfavorable undewriting" (ie people died/got injured). That's my interpretation.
I am assuming that underwriting means the actual process of underwriting a claim/making a risk assumption on the individual buying a claim. So if the underwriting is unfavorable, then that means they made wrong assumptions on when the person was going to die, or how likely they were to die in a given year, or how likely they were to become injured, etc, and thus they had to pay out more. I don't work in this industry, though, so I could be misinterpreting that. But it seems to me that a decrease in adjusted earnings of almost a billion when they still had the fourth quarter to report is significant. Page 5 has their net income through sept as only 5.3 billion. Also, in that table you can see that claims paid out are up roughly 2.5 billion compared to same ninths months of 2020, whereas their premium payments (you paying them every month) are only up a little under 800 million (top line items in expenses and assets categories, right side).
Pg: 114 (Asia section): "Underwriting and Actuarial Assumption Review. Higher claims, primarily in Japan and Korea decreased adjusted earnings by $28 million. The unfavorable change from our annual actuarial assumption reviews resulted in a net decrease of $51 million in adjusted earnings."
You find this stuff in the "Notes to consolidated financial statements" section. Usually follows right after the financial statements. You can jump to it by clicking the link at the top of the document, or doing CTR+F.
These reports are required by law. They can't hide them. You can look up other companies and I'll bet it's a similar story. They're saying it's because people didn't seek treatment in 2020. I'm sure that's part of it but idk if it's the whole story, like I said. You can discern for yourself.
It's possible hidden somewhere in there it states the increase/decrease in mortality. I just don't have time right now to get into it. If people have time, you should be looking into this. It's in the filings, just in total dollar basis, not increase of people dying.
Hi Steve, my husband works in life insurance in Australia. He's been asking whether there have been statistically significant increases in mortality and morbidity experience as a result of the 'pandemic'. On the three occasions he has asked this question within his own organisation, it has been misinterpreted. The actuaries and underwriters seem to think he is asking about experience changes due to the virus itself, i.e. direct Covid deaths or disability claims, rather than from the vaccines.
As to your line of enquiry, he believes it is not the life insurers but rather the re-insurers who would be ultimately affected by a mispricing of the risk. An insurer has a vested interest in maintaining premium rates as low as possible in order to maintain their share of business. Secondly, their pools of business are often too small and the experience too lumpy for anyone to draw statistically significant conclusions from the experience data. An exception to this would be the very large group risk pools like the Indiana Life example quoted in The Centre Square article on Jan 1.
The re-insurers on the other hand, have much larger data sets across many fronting insurers. So he thinks you may be better served by talking to the large re-insurers like RGA, Swiss Re, Munich Re, Hanover Re. It is these organisations that ultimately carry much of the long tail risk who should be monitoring mortality and morbidity experience changes due to the pandemic and its 'cure', the vaccines themselves.
I will get him to join your insurance substack group.