Health

The issue

The global health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has created a range of knock-on effects for both individual health and health systems. For example, the unpredictability of the virus, the enforced isolation and the resulting financial instability have had adverse impacts on people’s physical and mental health.

According to a WHO survey from 2020, more than half of 163 countries surveyed have experienced disrupted health services due to COVID-19 as they switched to crisis mode.

The risk

The reduction in health services is potentially dangerous for individuals. With fewer people actively seeking help for critical medical conditions including hypertension, diabetes, cancer treatment and cardiovascular emergencies, health care, morbidity and mortality costs could increase in the future.

One area of concern is the rise in anxiety and depression that is strongly associated with the pandemic. This has been observed especially among the younger population, with several studies showing clear age-dependent differences in stress and depression rates.

The opportunity

Mental health is an excellent example of how life and health insurance can go beyond covering the costs of treatments by offering policyholders access to preventative solutions, including minimally disruptive, low-cost interventions. These types of services can both offset and mitigate higher claims.

In 2021, for example, Swiss Re developed solutions specifically for mental health. This included a partnership with mental health platform Wysa to develop an app that includes improved monitoring of mental health and supports insurers in their goal of improving products and the consumer experience.

Swiss Re is seeing opportunities to deploy its knowledge on lifestyle factors, pandemic costs and public-private partnerships directly to its clients. This work includes updating Life Guide, Swiss Re’s own life and health underwriting manual, so that clients can incorporate COVID-19-specific factors as well as lifestyle factors into their underwriting.

L&H underwriting innovation

Swiss Re is well-equipped to respond to evolving health trends. L&H Underwriting Research and Development is a global team of underwriters, medical officers and research analysts that helps Swiss Re and its clients address these developments.


The team has three priorities: carrying out research and development to drive business growth and protect against risk, developing underwriting tools, and maintaining underwriting standards and governance.


During the COVID-19 pandemic, the team’s research on the virus’s impact on L&H underwriting meant that Swiss Re was the first re/insurer to provide underwriting guidance on this issue.


One of the team’s chief tasks is to maintain the medical underwriting guidelines in Life Guide. For example, in 2021, the team implemented a new “cardiometabolic calculator”, which incorporates Swiss Re’s research around mental well-being, physical activity, environment, sleep, nutrition and substance use into our underwriting guidelines.


One important area for the team is how to make underwriting more precise, personalised and forward-looking. This includes investigating how data might be used to encourage policyholders to adopt healthier lifestyle habits.

Learn more about Swiss Re’s market context

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Our strategy in action
Discover how Swiss Re advanced its business in 2021 by focusing on three strategic pillars: risk transfer, risk insights and risk partnerships.

Risk Transfer