Although health at work has increased in recent years, there are insurance risks threatening this trend, a Gen Re conference has heard.
Speaking at reinsurer Gen Re's "ReGenerate" seminar on "Getting better at work", Claire Henshall, claims manager at Gen re, noted the steady downward trend in terms of people injured at work.
She said: " In terms of physical risk, over the last ten years there has been a 6% decrease, which can be attributed to legislation over health and safety.
"The way work has been designed has changed. Even for those not doing physical work, ergonomics have seen great strides.
"How people sit at their desk and use a computer has had a lot of attention paid to it. A few years ago owe were seeing a lot of repetitive strain injury, this has been designed out."
However, she highlighted two future risks to this scenario.
"The fisrst risk is that we are getting fat," she said. "Being fat causes problems we are all aware of, but this has implications for insurance.
"A lot of improvements in heath and safety at work are related to equipment, which overweight people often cannot use properly. We are also seeing a lot of claims based on sleep apnea, but this is caused by weight.
"So what do we say to these people in terms of claims management? Can we tell people to diet?
"I'm not sure we would be allowed to take that approach. We would not be able to say ‘I'm not paying your claim because you are not following proper treatment by not eating properly.'
"So what does this mean for us? This is already an underlying crisis.
"Currently we ask weight and height and exclude if they are too fat. But in a couple of years that could be seen a s discriminatory in the same way we are not allowed to rate women differently in a few months.
"Are there ways to change the product to make it more appropriate for the changing shape of the UK?"
She indicated that there could be a change in definitions or a different retirement age or policy terms in certain circumstances.
Henshall added: "We really need to look at health promotion during the course of policies and look at technology to monitor health.
"We need to prove someone is ill in order to claim. If obesity is the main factor in a claim, is that an illness? That is the claims dilemma."
The secondary risk is the aging of the work force.
"We don't see people being able to maintain stress levels as they age," said Henshall. "Risk does not remain the same over the life of a policy."
