At its 2020 Risk Summit, Momentum Life Insurance shared the latest claims statistics. The 2019 claims pay-outs were the highest to date at R4.6bn. The 2019 pay-outs were made up of R3.3bn in death claims, R695m in critical illness claims, R98m in income protection claims, and R499m in disability claims.
All-in-all, the number of claims paid in 2019 claims are up 30% from 2018.
Commenting on unpaid claims, Jenny Ingram, Head of Product Development & Pricing at Momentum Life Insurance said: “Each case is different but the main reason we don’t pay these claims is because they don’t meet the definition for the pay-out, there was an exclusion listed on the product, or there was deliberate non-disclosure from a client.”
Claims statistics report for 2019 summary:
| ● | The top three causes of death claims remained relatively stable from the previous year being cancer, cardiovascular diseases and unnatural deaths, like suicide and accidents. |
| ● | There was an alarming 65% increase in suicide claims, of which, Momentum noticed, 88% were male. |
| ● | In 2019, Momentum paid 80 terminal illness claims, 53% more than in 2018, to the amount of R187 million. Cancer was the primary cause for most of these claims, with cancers of the gastro-intestinal tract occurring with the highest frequency, especially colon and rectal cancer. |
| ● | The R695m in critical illness claims paid out by Momentum in 2019 marks a 29% increase in claims from the previous year. One of the big contributors to this increase was nervous system related claims which almost doubled from the previous year. The rising prevalence of gastro-intestinal cancers is also concerning. |
| ● | Females under the age of 40 claim twice as much as males of the same age, indicating that women tend to claim earlier in life with breast cancer being the main culprit in this space. |
| ● | Musculoskeletal disability claims increased by almost 70% |
| ● | Most income protection claims in 2019 were musculoskeletal, which include fractures, spinal surgeries and torn muscles. |
Head of Life Insurance Marketing at Momentum, George Kolbe, further notes that the claim statistics for 2020 and 2021 might look very different from their experience over the last couple of years. “To a certain extent, our 2019 experience will become the benchmark against which we judge the impact of COVID-19.”
Click here to read the detail of the Momentum claim statistics.
Related articles:
Sanlam claims statistics – Heart disease leading cause of claims
Old Mutual Claim Statistics – Sharp increase in heart attack/psychiatric disorder claims.
