Questionnaire based mortality assessment: an exploratory analysis of NHANES III

The need for speed and efficiency in life insurance underwriting has never been greater. With increasing acquisition costs, the need for timeliness to complete the sales process, and the need for accurate mortality prediction a great deal of resources have been devoted to the development of non-traditional underwriting processes and criteria in hopes of streamlining the process. In this paper, we describe an exploratory analysis of mortality linked data from the US NHANES III study. Our goal for this analysis was to identify mortality predictors that would be good candidates for further investigation in insurance applicants, especially in the context of simplified issue products which focus on younger age applicants. We identified aerobic exercise, dental health, alcohol beverage type and quantity, and dietary components and patterns as factors that may hold promise as mortality predictors in persons age 17-65. Though the limitations of this analysis preclude the immediate use of these factors as underwriting criteria, it does appear that several of these hold promise, and should be tested in an insurance application context. Focus groups, market testing, or even insertion as non-actionable questions in a subset of applications may be ways to collect further data on them.