Liberty's 2014 pay-out largest in company's history

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In 2014, the majority of payments were for claims on life cover policies, totalling R2.2bn. The insurer also paid out R411m for income protection benefits, while R408m in critical illness claims were settled.

Liberty's director for Risk Product Innovation, Nicholas van der Nest, said the 2014 claims figures showed that cancer was the biggest reason for all Liberty claims.

Cancer claims

"One in four claims was for cancer, a trend that we have seen developing over the years. About 30% of claims paid to women were related to cancer claims, and for men this was 21.7%," said Van der Nest. "With medical advancements such as better screening programmes and more awareness around health and lifestyle, cancers are being diagnosed earlier and at younger ages, and people are now more likely to survive a cancer diagnosis."

The statistics reveal that for critical illness benefits, cancer was the largest natural cause of claims at 44.7% of critical illness claims paid, followed by cardiac and cardiovascular conditions at 29.5% and strokes at 12.2%. Breast cancer was the most prevalent cancer among women (49.7% of critical illness claims for women), followed by skin cancer (8.3%).

For men, prostate cancer was the most prevalent cancer (28.1% of cancer claims paid), followed by skin cancer (10.7%).

Retrenchment claims

The current economic environment also had a significant impact on Liberty's customers, particularly its younger customers. Retrenchment was responsible for 35.6% of claims for customers under 35 and accounted for 15.1% of all unnatural causes under loss of income protection benefits.

"Considering the number of life cover claims for customers under the age of 35, it is clear that motor vehicle accidents remain a significant risk, accounting for 51.5% of all life protection claims for males in this group, but only 16.7% of claims for females in this group," he noted.

This highlights another interesting trend - men and women have different insurance buying habits. Men generally take up life insurance cover, whereas women seem to be more conscious of the risk of critical illness and disability and tend to purchase loss of income protection cover.