Zurich, in collaboration with research partner Zest Healthcare Communications, has come up with a “one-stop reference point” for quantifying the direct and indirect costs of serious health conditions.

Zurich’s Cost of Care study presents advisers and licensees a consolidated picture of the prevalence of lifetime costs associated with serious health conditions, allowing them to better recommend products, benefits, and sums insured to life-insurance customers.

“Quantifying the financial and time cost of recovery is an important element of most life-insurance advice methodologies, but up until now it has been hard to get accurate, up-to-date data,” said Danni Visser from Zurich’s risk strategy team. “The research available is generally from quite disparate sources, is in different formats and in many cases is out of date. The pace of advancement in medical diagnoses and treatments makes the currency of data even more crucial, and with this resource, advisers have the latest data in one source, in a consistent, easy-to-follow format.”

Adam Crabbe, Zurich’s risk strategy specialist, said the research would allow advisers to more easily explain the basis for their recommendations.

“By giving clients a greater understanding of the basis for advice recommendations, they are more likely to engage with – and appreciate the value of – that advice,” Crabbe said.

The insurer also rolled out a companion tool for the research – an interactive calculator which interrogates the research data by condition, gender, and age.

“Advisers and clients can use the calculator together, exploring the financial and time impact of particular health conditions,” Crabbe said. “It can make the comprehensive data from a 100-page research paper a lot more accessible for both advisers and their clients and allows the experience to be far more tailored.”

Visit Zurich’s website to access the research.