Weight loss drugs are playing a key role in improving health outcomes, but questions remain over how insurers should take them into consideration when pricing policies.
Georgina Howe, commercial director at Teladoc Health UK, told delegates at Women In Protection 2025 that around half a million people in the country were taking weight loss drugs.
“That means that among all of your policyholders, probably in this room there are people taking weight loss drugs,” Howe said.
“The fact is that these drugs have really strong clinical evidence behind them in terms of the impact on weight loss for people where that is a risk impact for their health,” she continued.
“By reducing that you would expect to reduce your chance of developing serious illnesses, cardiovascular disease, cancers and so on.
“So they have a positive impact on the risk profiles of your portfolio, but you may not know it.”
Sustainable improvements
But Howe pointed out that if customers taking such drugs fail to make the necessary holistic life and behavioural changes to their life, then their health improvements will not prove sustainable.
And this creates an issue for insurers, she added.
“There are a lot of questions of does that mean actually you’ve got some upsides in the risk that you’re carrying?” Howe said.
“How do you price this? Is this something that you should be taking into consideration when you’re pricing policies?
“How do you know if it’s going to be sustainable? What about side effects?
“So I think it does pose a lot of questions for the protection market.
“I also think there is an opportunity here because as we have said, if you can use that as a tool to drive something that’s sustainable life changes, that can have a really positive impact on potential health outcomes.”
