Living longer, healthier lives

Swiss Re offers solutions to insurers and their customers to navigate the impacts of cancer, mental health, and rare and chronic diseases on mortality and morbidity. Swiss Re relies on data to empower people to take charge of their health destinies, helping them improve their well-being and boost the resilience of individuals and society.

We've identified a range of lifestyle factors that can negatively affect morbidity and mortality, with a focus on how individuals can reduce their risk in these areas. These factors cannot only impact individual's comfort and happiness, but we see an opportunity to move beyond clinical factors and incorporate lifestyle factors to improve how we assess and manage risk. Recently we've focused on metabolic health and how diet relates to obesity and diabetes, both of which have been increasing rapidly in recent years.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, we identified mental wellbeing as one of the Big Six Lifestyle Factors affecting health and longevity. Mental health also has an under-recognised impact on productivity and disability claims for employers. Our research looks at how mental wellbeing impacts longevity and we provide practical suggestions for insurers looking to use mental wellbeing more holistically in the underwriting process and beyond.

Human longevity has made tremendous strides in the past century. Often coming in waves as improvements in research and healthcare happen in different places around the world, most experts agree that there will be further gains in the coming decades. To generate long-term mortality forecasts, we believe a holistic view of historic trends combined with a forward-looking view of medical advances, societal changes and technological developments is a better approach than historical trends alone.