GLP-1s Are Breaking Life Insurance

Summary

Hello and happy Sunday! Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it in your inbox.I've just got back from HLTH in Amsterdam, nursing what might be the worst three-day hangover of my adult life. Worth it, though. It's one of the best health tech events in Europe, and I made some genuinely great connections.If you’re ever at a large health conference, here’s a neat little hack I learned: Be brave enough to ask questions during panels. It's terrifying, but suddenly everyone knows your name, your company, and that you've got enough spine to speak up in front of 200 people. Makes the networking infinitely easier afterward.Now, while everyone else obsessed over AI (shocking, I know), I was laser-focused on GLP-1s. One throwaway comment during a private equity panel sent me down a rabbit hole on insurance companies grappling with the weight-loss drug explosion.The downstream effects are completely fascinating and completely overlooked. I spent the rest of the conference hunting down insurance people who were all asking the same question: how the hell do we deal with this?Turns out, they have good reason to panic.Life insurers can predict when you'll die with about 98% accuracy. This ruthless precision comes from from decades and decades of mortality data they use to figure out how much to charge you every year, so that the money they earn (from you and by investing your premiums) will easily cover what they'll need to pay out later. Of course, not everyone gets the same deal.Underwriting is the dark art that allows an insurer to figure out if you're a good bet or a risky one. Typically, underwriters- suspiciously sounds like undertakers-rely on a handful of key health metrics like HbA1c, cholesterol, blood pressure, and BMI to calculate your risk of dying earlier than expected (and thus costing them money). Those eagle-eyed readers among you have probably noticed something interesting already. Those same four metrics are exactly what GLP‑1s improve. Not just a ...