THE INSURANCE Commission (IC) will conduct a study on the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on mortality trends and life insurers’ claims experience.
The 2022 Philippine Intercompany Mortality (PICM) study will be conducted by the IC’s Actuarial Division and the Actuarial Society of the Philippines, the insurance regulator said in IC Circular Letter 2022-55 dated Dec. 29, 2022 and uploaded on its website on Monday.
“It aims to examine the industry’s mortality experience compared to the 2017 PICM Table and the impact of COVID-19 to the experience. The study will not result in an updated mortality table,” the IC said.
“The analysis of the mortality claims experience, as significantly affected by the pandemic, is imperative in analyzing its impact to pricing adequacy and the industry’s financial stability,” it added.
All life insurers with policies issued before Dec. 31. 2022 are invited to participate in the study.
The IC said the mortality tool it used to gather data for the 2016 PICM will be used for the 2022 study. The same software used to submit data will also be utilized again.
“In order to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on the mortality, 2 sets of results are expected to be submitted for the study with 1) all deaths tagged as DEATH and 2) only COVID-19 deaths tagged as DEATH. Even as COVID-19 claims are recent and may not yet be fully reported, the experience from claims reported may already give an indication of the minimum impact of COVID-19 on industry mortality,” the regulator said.
It said the study will be conducted using policy count and will only cover direct, standard risk, individual business.
It will cover experience from policy anniversaries in 2014 to 2021 and track experience by policy duration.
“The study aims to analyze the experience under various study parameters, such as age, gender, product type, distribution channel, and underwriting basis,” the IC said.
“The results of the experience will be assessed in comparison with the 2017 PICM Table. Actual/Expected ratios will be represented and Expected will be based on the 2017 PICM,” it added.
The data to be used must be current data available by not earlier than June 30, 2022. These must include data on all direct business on basic standard individual ordinary (whole life, endowment, term) and variable life policies issued on or before Dec. 31, 2021 but not terminated before their policy anniversaries.
The deadline for the submission of data is on Feb. 3.
“The IC will conduct an initial review of the data submission on a company level and may ask the company representative questions or clarifications related to the submission. The companies are requested to keep all files used and generated (input and output) and data certification report for at least 3 years,” the regulator added. — A.M.C. Sy
