In this space, we recently posited whether any amount of alcohol use promotes health. The current thinking says no. But what about caffeinated beverages? Coffee alone is so popular that up to 40% of the world’s population consumes it daily, providing about 3.2 billion of us with a cup of delight to start (or finish) the day (1). This number pales when we add caffeinated tea, and currently 90% of us drink one or the other daily. For the mathematically inclined, that is about 5 million servings of caffeine every minute of every day. Continue reading “A Second Cup or More? The Caffeine Question” →

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A Second Cup or More? The Caffeine Question

At a recent major underwriting conference, the agenda included discussion of the increased trend in mortality associated with heat waves. This topic began to get attention in the early 21^st century when more than 20,000 deaths in Europe were attributed to the record-breaking heatwave in August 2003 (1). Since then and almost every year since, news reports bear the sad news of clusters of deaths during short, intense periods of heat. Closer to home, we remember the ‘Heat Dome’ that settled over much of British Columbia between June 25^th and July 1^st of 2021. Breaking 103 all-time heat records including a 49.6 Celsius one-day high in Lytton, resulting in a wildfire that destroyed the town the next day. In that period, 650 heat-related deaths were confirmed in B.C. (2). Back in Europe, summers regularly include death counts, like the 2023 heatwave death toll in France of 5,167 people, the majority affecting those over the age of 75 (3). Continue reading “Paying Attention to Climate Change” →

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Paying Attention to Climate Change

In the 1830’s, the English novelist Charles Dickens published a series of stories called “The Pickwick Papers”. One character, the larger-than life Joe, was known for his prodigious appetite and large build with an ability to fall asleep quickly and often during the day. In 1956, an astute medical researcher named Burwell and his colleagues published an article in the American Journal of Medicine titled, “Extreme obesity associated with alveolar hypoventilation-a Pickwickian syndrome”. This was the first modern day presentation of a sleep-related breathing disorder now known as obstructive sleep apnea (1).

What is obstructive sleep apnea, also known as OSA?

Apnea means to stop breathing, and in the context of OSA this happens while asleep. That sound you hear is the often loud snoring that accompanies these episodes of breathlessness. The obstructive part is in the upper airway system caused by the inadequate function of the tongue muscles or surrounding muscles that keep the airways open (2). Continue reading “Obstructive Sleep Apnea: Sleep Well, Breathe Easy” →

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Obstructive Sleep Apnea: Sleep Well, Breathe Easy

Having a drink, taking a shot, chugging a brew are familiar synonyms for alcohol consumption. This is neither new nor regional. Humankind the world over has been fermenting beverages for millennia with the oldest verifiable brewery located near Haifa in modern day Israel (1). Whether imbibing baijiu in Shanghai, sake in Tokyo, ouzo in Athens or a stunning variety of wines in the Mediterranean countries, the cultural and geographical blueprint for alcohol use runs deep and broad. France even has wines named after some of its’ most famous regions as any proud denizen of Champagne or Bordeaux will boast. Continue reading “Having a Drink: Is One Too Many?” →

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Having a Drink: Is One Too Many?

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. About 9,000 Canadians are diagnosed annually causing approximately 1,200 deaths per year (1). As a cancer long known to plague mankind, the father of Western medicine, Hippocrates, described these potentially deadly skin lesions as “the fatal black tumour”. For millennia, there was a poor understanding of the causes and possible treatments. That changed in the 19^th century when physicians noted the propensity of melanoma to metastasize and later how excising certain lymph glands might prevent the spread of this skin cancer (2). Continue reading “Melanoma: Through Thick and Thin” →

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Melanoma: Through Thick and Thin

The incentive to improve and innovate has been around for as long as the business world itself. The American engineer, Frederick Taylor, deemed that work is worthy of observation and analysis (1). In the early 20^th century, Taylor pioneered the time study of work and workers, requiring the observer to use a stopwatch while standing next to the worker, timing task completion (2). In the early 1990s, business consultants Michael Hammer and James Champy coined the term “Reengineering”, launching a movement that aimed to upend the conventions of usual business practices, exhorting managers to take a fresh look at every function and task (3). Continue reading “ChatGPT and Underwriting: Can We Chat?” →

When primitive men and women discovered fire, it changed their very existence. Food and shelters could be heated, not to mention providing illumination and some degree of protection from the animal kingdom predators that roamed the planet. Not quite as dramatic except to those of us in the life insurance industry, the employment of actuarial science in the late 17^th century provided kindling to the underwriting fire. This included the production of life tables and application of compound interest to the challenge of calculating the present value of the future liability, the very foundation of life insurance premiums.

What does this have to do with gender? In the early days, not very much. It was all an actuary could do to wade through individual birth and death records to calculate premiums based on the still most important risk factor, the age of the life being insured. No distinction between male and female was made and, as a result, unisex pricing was the norm. Around 1880, the rate of male mortality started to rise and astute actuaries the world over eventually began to reflect those differences in the pricing of life insurance rates. (1). The mortality/gender gap is especially pronounced in older lives, where 57% of all those aged 65 are female and by age 85 women make up 67% of the population (2). In Canada, women, on average, live 4 years longer than men, making the actuarial argument that men should pay more for life insurance (3). While Canadian insurance companies take these differences into account when pricing life insurance, it is not always the universal view. Since 2012, the European Union prohibits pricing based on gender for life, health and even auto insurance, raising the age-old question of fairness; should a lower risk group, in this case women, subsidize the higher-risk group, male policyholders (4)? Continue reading “The Gender Risk: What’s the Difference?” →

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The Gender Risk: What’s the Difference?

“The following article references an opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.”

Financial underwriting. These two words put together are sometimes the subject of heated debate and occasionally, more than mild disagreement between Advisors and underwriters. Even usually agreeable underwriters are known to argue strenuously amongst themselves and on differing sides of a financially challenging case. Unlike medical underwriting where guidelines cover a wide and deep array of conditions and risk scenarios, financial guidelines take up much less space in most underwriting manuals, highlighting the art rather the science of decision making in those cases.

But in every case, the higher the insurance amount applied for, the more thorough the financial underwriting – with extra attention paid to the financial information provided, including the nature of the applicant’s net worth – right down to the types of investments and currencies they hold. How does cryptocurrency, not brand new but still a relative newcomer in global finance, impact financial underwriting? In this Risk Bit, we’ll touch on the topic to get a sense of whether having a bit of Bitcoin is a friendly addition to the file information or whether an excess of Ethereum turns the underwriter into a file foe. Continue reading “Cryptocurrency and Financial Underwriting: Friend and Foe?” →

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Speculating on Life and Death… and Cryptocurrency

This is neither an endorsement or advice about the treatment of mental health.

It goes without saying that good mental health is foundational to overall health and well-being.

In underwriting, a report of confirmed or even suspected history of depression or related conditions gets a lot of attention and policy issue can range from standard rates to rated premium to sometimes no offer at all, where the risk is deemed too high to accept.

Treatments for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or other conditions in the mental health spectrum continue to evolve. The use of psychedelics is a newer facet of treatment. Natural substances that induce a hallucinatory state have been around for millennia. These include everything from cannabis, now legal in Canada, and include opium poppy to ayahuasca, the latter a product of brewing a particular vine or shrub commonly found in South America (1). Continue reading “The Evolving World of Mental Health Treatments” →

Underwriters see an unprecedented number of cases of suspected or confirmed cognitive decline, the inevitable result of our aging population. While cognitive decline can be demonstrated by a degradation or loss of a number of functions such as learning, language or complex attention skills, the apparent loss of memory is the most common presenting complaint. Even cases where the memory loss has not had a major impact on daily living, a suspicion of even mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is enough to have the insurance application turned down.

But what about the other side of the memory coin, specifically can we remember too much or remember in ways that are unhealthy? How does this work and is there a name for this condition? Let’s delve a little deeper. Continue reading “Healthy Forgetting: Remember This” →

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Healthy Forgetting: Remember This