COVER Feature: Rising rates

Of all the difficulties faced by life insurers in recent years, rising death rates have not been one of them. There was the HIV/AIDS panic in the '80s causing significant life insurance price rises, as HIV/AIDS deaths rose to become the biggest killer of UK men under age 45 at its peak in 1994. But after that, medical treatment made significant inroads with resulting falls in the numbers of cases of full-blown AIDs and deaths, even though the number of HIV diagnoses went up. Since then, thanks to medical advances, the NHS and the decline of smoking, we have seen a happy trend of reducing...