Brokers have already been warned that the rapid growth of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs is creating new questions around disclosure and underwriting. But as access expands, another insurance issue is coming into focus: the liability exposure of the pharmacies and healthcare providers supplying them.
The arrival of oral GLP-1 treatments has added to a market already transformed by injectable drugs including Wegovy and Mounjaro. Their growing use is already raising questions for brokers around disclosure and underwriting, particularly as oral treatments potentially bring a wider group of consumers into the market. For brokers placing healthcare risks, however, there is another consideration: how patients are assessed, prescriptions are issued and potential side effects are communicated.
Rosehana Amin, partner at Clyde & Co, said increased adoption is likely to bring greater scrutiny.
"With Wegovy now available for sale through pharmacies, we are likely to see the use of weight-loss medicines across the UK significantly increase," she said.
That expansion brings additional considerations for the businesses involved in supplying the drugs and their insurers.
"From an insurance and liability perspective, wider adoption often means greater scrutiny. Manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies will need robust governance and patient communication processes to manage the risk of future disputes linked to unexpected side effects, allegations of inappropriate prescribing or product liability claims."
For brokers, that potentially makes the processes surrounding GLP-1 prescribing an increasingly important part of understanding and presenting a healthcare client's risk.
Will Marshall, head of legal and risk management at Altea, has argued that the greatest liability may ultimately arise not from the medicines themselves, but from failures in clinical governance. With prescribing expanding across NHS, private and online providers, he identified inadequate patient assessment, informed consent, monitoring and communication with GPs as potential sources of claims.
That creates a distinction brokers may need to draw out when presenting healthcare clients to underwriters. Two businesses prescribing the same medicine could carry substantially different exposures depending on the controls behind how they do it.
Regulators have already focused on those controls. The General Pharmaceutical Council has tightened guidance covering pharmacies providing services at a distance, with additional safeguards for weight-management medicines. These include independent verification of information such as a patient's weight, height and BMI before prescribing, as well as requirements around communication between prescriber and patient.
The direction of travel gives brokers a clearer indication of the information that could matter when discussing the exposure with clients and underwriters: who is prescribing, how patient information is verified, what follow-up takes place and what happens when concerns or adverse effects emerge.
Verification is already emerging as a wider insurance concern. The move towards oral GLP-1 treatments has put potential fraud and verification challenges on brokers' radar, particularly as medication becomes easier to access and potentially harder to identify through traditional fact-finds. For healthcare liability, the issue is different but related: whether providers themselves can demonstrate that patient information has been properly checked before treatment is prescribed.
The potential exposure becomes more significant where prescribing is carried out at scale.
Marshall identified aggregation risk as a particular concern for insurers. A flawed digital prescribing process, inadequate screening questionnaire or poor follow-up protocol could potentially affect thousands of patients, meaning a single weakness in a provider's system could result in multiple claims.
For brokers, that makes prescription volume only part of the picture. Marshall argued that underwriters should also examine clinician supervision, access to medical records, consent processes, adverse-event monitoring and escalation pathways when assessing providers.
There is already evidence overseas of how quickly litigation surrounding GLP-1 medicines can develop. Marshall cited more than 4,400 US lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies concerning GLP-1 drugs as of March 2026. More than 3,000 related to gastrointestinal injuries, with a smaller group concerning vision-related injuries. Plaintiffs have also alleged manufacturers failed to provide adequate warnings about potential risks.
UK negligence claims remain relatively limited, according to Marshall, but he said the risk profile is evolving rapidly as prescribing expands across NHS, private and online providers.
For brokers serving those businesses, growing patient numbers mean understanding whether clients' governance and prescribing processes are keeping pace with the scale of their GLP-1 business.
That could make relatively practical questions increasingly important at placement and renewal: how is patient information verified, who oversees prescribing decisions, how are risks communicated and could a weakness in one process affect a large number of patients?
As GLP-1 medicines become a routine part of weight management, the presence of the drugs alone may tell an underwriter relatively little about a healthcare client's exposure. For brokers, being able to demonstrate what sits behind the prescription could prove considerably more important.
