WTW and Klarity Pioneer Wearable Data Use in Life Insurance Underwriting

WTW, a prominent advisory and broking firm, is collaborating with UK-based health data analytics company Klarity to explore the integration of wearable technology data into life insurance underwriting. Traditional underwriting methods rely heavily on static health indicators such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure, BMI, smoking status, and family history, which often provide an incomplete risk profile. Klarity's new risk scoring tool leverages data from wearable devices, including smartwatches, drawing from over a decade of health data covering more than six million life years to develop personalized mortality risk scores.

WTW tested Klarity's model using US data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), revealing its potential to identify risk variations that conventional underwriting might overlook. The model demonstrated that some individuals categorized as standard risk could qualify for lower premiums based on their wearable-derived health metrics, while others deemed low risk by traditional measures exhibited elevated risk indicators through the wearable data. This nuanced risk assessment capability underscores the model's potential to refine underwriting classifications.

This initiative aligns with a broader industry trend towards incorporating advanced data analytics and real-time behavioral data into insurance practices. The model's AI-driven insights into health and behavioral data aim to enhance underwriting precision, customer engagement, and loyalty. Klarity's CEO highlighted the model's ability to identify applicants misclassified by standard methods, which could lead to more inclusive and dynamic underwriting processes.

Scholarly analysis by WTW's insurance consulting leadership emphasizes the transformative opportunity wearable data offers in personalizing insurance pricing and improving mortality prediction accuracy. By capturing real-world health behaviors such as activity levels, heart rate variability, and sleep quality, insurers can move beyond static metrics to more predictive and individualized risk modeling.

The use of wearable technology in insurance is supported by a growing base of US consumers utilizing fitness trackers, with 62 million users recorded in 2024 and projections exceeding 92 million by 2029. As wearable devices become a routine health monitoring tool, the integration of this data into life insurance underwriting could reshape risk evaluation standards and pricing models, promoting more responsive and tailored insurance products.

Overall, this partnership signals a shift toward data-driven, behaviorally informed life insurance underwriting, reflecting evolving technological capabilities and changing consumer data landscapes. While promising in its early testing with NHANES data, further industry-wide implementation and regulatory considerations remain to be addressed.