We understand through our claims experience that mental illness, musculoskeletal issues, cancer and heart disease are big issues in the UK. We paid out £1.4m on Income Protection claims to customers unable to work in 2009.
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In Critical illness claims we paid out £146million to customers in total. The majority of these were for cancer and other terminal illnesses.
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We continue to work with the Third Sector supporting their important work and also increasing our understanding of their findings. Understanding health issues informs our risk calculations, and can lead to reduced pricing whilst increasing the accessibility and affordability of products designed to mitigate health risks amongst our clients.
In line with our need to balance current claims from clients with future trends, we continue to support and benefit from relationships with key partners.
Longevity Science
We continue to fund and support the International Longevity Centre, a specialist Think Tank on Longevity Research. We have added to the research capabilities in 2009 with investment in the Longevity Science Advisory Panel.
The panel is dedicated to exploring the impact that a range of factors may have on future life expectancy in the UK. This includes the drivers that are enhancing life expectancy for example, medical advances and social change, as well as the inhibitors such as lifestyle and delays in development of treatments.
John Pollock, Group Executive Director (Risk), observed that, "A thorough understanding of a longevity risk is becoming a much more important element in the underwriting of annuity risk. Feedback from the panel will enable us to be more sophisticated in our pricing so we will be able to continue to offer our customers competitive, individually priced annuity rates in the future."
Critical Illness and Macmillan
We've joined forces with Macmillan and Nationwide to find out how cancer affects individuals' financial affairs. The research talked to a variety of people, some of whom have benefited from Critical Illness and Income Protection payouts.
This research will help our business to improve in a number of ways, including deepening our understanding of the financial implications of 'minor' or 'non-invasive' cancers. We'll use this insight to look for ways to shape our critical illness products accordingly, and to make sure that our products continue to meet the needs of modern-day cancer care.
A partnership with Macmillan will also enable us to deepen our understanding of how an individuals' daily life is affected by cancer, while the research will benefit both our business and wider society.
Heart Health
Our Group Protection business continues its partnership with the British Heart Foundation to help employers to encourage their workforces to be healthier. Healthier workforces lead to reduced risk and can mean reduced premiums for our customers. Think Fit Packs have been distributed to 10,000 people and at its core the "Stress and Your Heart" publication remains one of the key pieces information available with 600,000 copies distributed.
Emerging Trends - Childhood Obesity
We believe our business could be affected by increasing levels of childhood obesity, so it makes sense for us to try and understand the implications of this issue. To this end, we work with MEND, (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition, Do it!) an organisation committed to improving the health of families through the development of prevention and treatment programmes for childhood obesity. In 2009, we
- Supported the schools pilot of the "Your life, Your choice" pack which is designed to integrate with the PHSE Citizenship curriculum. Full launch is expected in September 2010.
- Helped MEND with their US expansion.
We will continue to work with our partners in the Third Sector and use the intelligence and knowledge we gain from them to inform our business.
In 2010 we are working with the British Heart Foundation to understand their expertise on leading edge heart science. Our underwriting and pricing teams in the Life, Annuities and Group Protection businesses are working with leading researchers at BHF. For example there is a need to understand specific issues around coronary artery by-pass grafting (CABG).
Our work with the Longevity Science Advisory Panel should start to bring forward a series of pricing changes and products to better accommodate longevity trends. We also need to take what we have learnt from Macmillan and the CIC research and accommodate it into our products.
MENDS's PHSE Citizenship programme should be rolled out beyond pilot stages to UK Schools to educate the next generation on making the right lifestyle choices.
We are also keen to make the debate on longevity a public one, reflected in our decision to publish our research.
We also recognize that, with the advancement of science, people's mental health is increasingly likely to deteriorate as much as their bodies, so we'll continue to look at the balanced need for mental and physical health.
Our work as a founding member of Climatewise will involve understanding the impacts of Climate change on people's health. There has been a lot of discussion on the impacts of climate change on people's homes in livelihoods but little is understood on the physiological and adaptability of people to rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere.