Life Insurance is about assessing and underwriting the risk of dying too soon or living too long. The development in the field of life sciences may change the way insurers underwrite life insurance risk today. Genetic underwriting is unacceptable at present even in the western world. Though every democratic nation wants to avoid discrimination based on birth, on which an individual has no control, advances in human genome based technologies have potential to have far-reaching impact on
Unless we plan well, India too may face what the world today calls ‘The Japan Syndrome’ - as the number of retired people grows, a declining band of workers having to support rising social-security payments......................... the business of life insurance. Correlation of specific genes and proteins with specific cancers, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and diabetes, will allow both physicians and patients to anticipate, plan for and mitigate, if not cure, DNA-based health challenges, development of pharmaceuticals that treat gene-based diseases, replacing surgeries and chemotherapy. Transhumanism, the movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of transforming fundamentally the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate ageing and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities will impact the way Life Insurance is priced today. Ultimately, Life Insurance covers the risk of dying early and also the risk of living too long. One side is protected by basic risk cover and the other by payment of annuities. The impact that the abovementioned changes signify, points clearly towards increased longevity with the passage of time. It is this parameter that will attain critical significance in the future. Coupled with increasing material prosperity, higher educational levels, mechanization of work demanding hard physical labour and sedentary lifestyle, this paradigm shift will necessitate major changes in the way in which Life Insurance industry operates. Increasing longevity has primarily two implications. One is that as mortality rate would decrease, the need of Life Insurance of the general populace apparently decreases. The corollary to that is that longevity has its own attendant problems and therefore demands newer solutions. While longevity improves, the quality
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