Kaya 959 Reporter
In South Africa, less than 50% of our adult population has been vaccinated.
Vaccinations of South Africans has been key in the country, particularly to curb hospitalisation rates and even the potential risk of rising death rates related to the COVID 19 virus.
Over the last two years during the pandemic, South Africans have found themselves under increased pressure when it comes to insurance.
Insurance companies have also seen an increase in death claim rates.
Kaya Biz with Gugulethu Mfuphi was joined by Hennie de Villiers, who is the deputy chair of the Asisa life and risk board committee broke down what is currently happening in the insurance industry in South Africa when it comes to unvaccinated South Africans.
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De Villiers says “There is overwhelming evidence that the risk of severe illness or death is significantly lower in those who are fully vaccinated. “
He believes with the current environment in the insurance industry of a consistently higher claims experience, insurers are left with little choice but to “adjust premiums in line with the higher risk presented by someone who is not vaccinated ”
De Villiers gave a background of how the different variants contributed to the change in policy and insurance rates particularly for those who are unvaccinated. He mentioned how insurers are trying to protect themselves against similar future events.
“Insurers look for ways to underwrite for these risks of COVID 19, and when the vaccination started being available we saw that the 4th wave was very severe.”
“So what you see these days with what insurers are doing is, on the one hand, they are trying to strengthen their balance sheet so they face similar future events.”
“The insurance industry is still very well-capitalized, even though there are these massive death claims, there is really no risk of insolvency of insurers, but typically what they have done is have questionnaires where they ask their customers if they have been vaccinated or not.”
He gave reasons why certain insurers have considered hiking their premium, and in some cases declined new clients.
“If not you will find different approaches in the industry, it is a competitive environment so insurers assess their own risk and so forth. But what we’ve seen is that for young people who are not vaccinated, you may pay a little bit more.
“But for older people that are not vaccinated, especially those that have other comorbidities, and illnesses you find that they pay up to double and sometimes don’t even get to be accepted for insurance purely because they are not vaccinated,” said De Villiers
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