Coming to an insurance company near you.. "Fat" Premiums

[SoCalDem]

http://www.fitcommerce.com/News/NewsView.asp?newsId=2076


PRESS RELEASE



Higher BMIs May Lead to Higher Insurance Rates


(04/10/04) As with tobacco, people who are obese may be facing higher insurance premiums due to their excess weight. It's a proven risk factor and now the insurance companies may be assessing higher premiums to those with higher BMIs.


April 10, 2004 Zurich, Switzerland -- If living a longer and better life is not motivation to take the excess pounds off the midriff, then perhaps dolling out more money for health and life insurance for those who tip the scale a little too far, will.
As with tobacco, people who are obese may be facing higher insurance premiums due to their excess weight. It's a proven risk factor. Just imagine what the life expectancy would be if we all had lower BMIs? "Unless the prevalence of obesity is brought under control, consumers will bear the ultimate cost. As consumers' Body Mass Index goes up, so too will their premiums,"
-- Ronald Klein, Swiss Re's Life & Health Business Group

The increasing prevalence of obesity is too significant for the life insurance industry to ignore, according to a recent Swiss Re study. The report analyses the impact of obesity on mortality trends, and identifies the implications of this escalating global epidemic on the pricing and underwriting of life insurance products.

Obesity Is Now A Major Public Health Concern Worldwide

With links to cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes and many types of cancer, obesity is now a major public health concern worldwide. Recent estimates put the prevalence of obesity in the developed world at around 10% to 20% for men and 10% to 25% for women. In the US and UK, obesity has increased two to threefold in the last 20 years and other developed countries show similar patterns of increase. Obesity is not, however, confined to these countries. In the developing world, the prevalence of obesity is around 5% and is expected to rise in the future.

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a related story


http://www.sundayherald.com/41102


After the fat salary, the simply obese retirement




Alf Young



THE days of the long-service gold watch or framed print are long gone from British corporate life. Even where loyal employees still manage to put in enough years with the same firm such perks are becoming rare. Never mind mere baubles, a growing number of workers now have cause to worry whether that company pension scheme they’ve paid into for so long will still manage to fund their old age in the manner they anticipated. But there’s one privileged group of employees with no such worries. British executives have long been the butt of shareholder and media criticism for the sheer scale of their remuneration and the at-best tenuous link, in some packages, between achievement and reward.

Now fire is being directed at the remarkable perks some executives still walk away with when they depart. This week we’ve discovered that Sir Richard Giordano, who left the chairman’s seat at BG Group last December, has been given the best part of £1 million to meet his personal office costs in New York for the next five years. Quite why Giordano, now 70, needs this office is unclear. But it has been made clear he won’t be using it to represent his former employer in the US. The one-off £970,000 payment meets the rent and the cost of a full-time secretary and chauffeur-driven car. On top of that, BG will continue to contribute up to £30,000 a year to meet its former chairman’s health insurance premiums.

Lucky Dick may be an extreme case, but such executive perks are increasingly common. We’ve also just discovered that when David Mackay, the former chief executive of Edinburgh-based John Menzies, retired last May he was given a farewell package worth £339,000. The newspaper distributor and aviation services group was so grateful for his 40-year contribution it gave him a large slug of Menzies stock and his £26,000 company Mercedes to keep.

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I’ve no idea whether Ross, who’s in his late 50s, will find a fresh career challenge. But if he decides to retire, he’ll be able to do so free of any cash worries. In his last nine months in the Widows job, Ross’s pension pot was increased by £903,000, taking it to £5.3m. At Menzies, Mackay only got a £312,000 pension top-up, taking his pot to £4.42m.

Multi-million pound pension pots, guaranteeing six-figure pensions, are now the norm for senior executives, even here in Scotland. It’s a norm that stands in stark contrast to the number of defined-benefit pension schemes in Scottish companies that have been closed to new employees. Quite why with six-figure annual pensions – after years of even larger six-figure, or even seven-figure, salary packages – these departing executives can’t afford to pay for their own offices, secretaries, cars, health insurance, or even general advice, beats me.

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11 April 2004