Data suggests that 9MFY21 death-claim growth is in line with or even below trend of prior six years. LIC and private-insurers show divergent trends, though.
Great analysis Anand. This must have been a lot of work and your point about evaluating data before coming up with theories is an excellent one.
One caveat - it is important to wait for the full year (and perhaps even QI FY22) data as life insurance claims tend to come with a lag of 6m. Our data suggests that there was a tick-up in overall mortality due to Covid in FY21. It was not as much as one might have initially expected. Regretfully, the current wave is more serious and will lead to much higher mortality. The key question now is whether this should be treated as a one-off epidemic-related event or will those who had Covid have lower life expectancy in general? Of course, the actual answer will take time to emerge.
This is very interesting. Thank you for doing the analysis. It does correlate with the fact that on account of the lockdown, traffic related deaths might have reduced. I wonder if it’s possible to separate out those from health / hospital deaths. I’d be very interested to see what the data looks like for FY22 since it’s the second wave that’s been really lethal for India. Please could you send me the excel file to Raj.sin.2@gmail.com
I wonder if income categorization would add to richer analysis (though not sure how would it be possible with present data). My hypothesis is that first wave had higher lower income strata fatality which changed in second wave. This explains LIC vs other pvt players divergence as well.
Interesting analysis, tho I feel it misses one element. When a full lockdown was imposed for almost 3 months, it stopped all moving traffic, construction work and other industries. Road accidents, industrial accidents and construction work make up for large portion of death claims (I know this from advocates who represent above mentioned insurance companies). This means that you will have to adjust for these numbers and these deaths likely never happened because we were in a lockdown state, and further this number will actually have to be attributed to covid deaths as that is the next most likely alternative.
Given LIC’s 87% market share in life policies, why would you even look at the private sector players. LIC, with its market share and distribution is representative of the total country. So, if LIC, claims have shot up by 16% then that tells you something about the true excess deaths in India during the first wave
Great analysis Anand. This must have been a lot of work and your point about evaluating data before coming up with theories is an excellent one.
One caveat - it is important to wait for the full year (and perhaps even QI FY22) data as life insurance claims tend to come with a lag of 6m. Our data suggests that there was a tick-up in overall mortality due to Covid in FY21. It was not as much as one might have initially expected. Regretfully, the current wave is more serious and will lead to much higher mortality. The key question now is whether this should be treated as a one-off epidemic-related event or will those who had Covid have lower life expectancy in general? Of course, the actual answer will take time to emerge.
This is really good analysis! very often noise and narrative take front cover while truth gets hidden..
Greetings Anand. Would be of great help if you share the excel file for the data on a.vrishan@gmail.com
Superb article
Hello Anand. This is some quality data. Would be of great help if you share the excel file for the data on blitz.yash92@gmail.com
This is very interesting. Thank you for doing the analysis. It does correlate with the fact that on account of the lockdown, traffic related deaths might have reduced. I wonder if it’s possible to separate out those from health / hospital deaths. I’d be very interested to see what the data looks like for FY22 since it’s the second wave that’s been really lethal for India. Please could you send me the excel file to Raj.sin.2@gmail.com
I wonder if income categorization would add to richer analysis (though not sure how would it be possible with present data). My hypothesis is that first wave had higher lower income strata fatality which changed in second wave. This explains LIC vs other pvt players divergence as well.
Interesting analysis, tho I feel it misses one element. When a full lockdown was imposed for almost 3 months, it stopped all moving traffic, construction work and other industries. Road accidents, industrial accidents and construction work make up for large portion of death claims (I know this from advocates who represent above mentioned insurance companies). This means that you will have to adjust for these numbers and these deaths likely never happened because we were in a lockdown state, and further this number will actually have to be attributed to covid deaths as that is the next most likely alternative.
Given LIC’s 87% market share in life policies, why would you even look at the private sector players. LIC, with its market share and distribution is representative of the total country. So, if LIC, claims have shot up by 16% then that tells you something about the true excess deaths in India during the first wave
Hey, thanks for the note! Interesting starting point and pointers on the process. Can I please request for the excel @ p13nishantn@iima.ac.in