WHY THE FUTURE OF LIFE INSURANCE MAY DEPEND ON YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE
February 10, 2019 by Angela Chen
Don’t post photos of yourself smoking on social-media sites. Do post photos of yourself running.” These two suggestions appear in a recent Wall Street Journal article about New York state’s new rules for how life insurance companies can use public data to help set premiums. Such tips — under the heading “what you pay for life insurance could depend on your next Instagram post” — seem ominous, portending a surveilled future where tweeting about rock climbing could hurt your wallet and services exist to curate photos that appeal to insurance companies.
In reality, it has long been the case that what you pay for life insurance could at least be affected by your next Instagram post. It is already legal, and increasingly common, for life insurers to use so-called “nontraditional” sources of public data — including credit scores, court documents, and motor vehicle records — to inform insurance underwriting decisions, though few use actual social media data.
New York is simply the first state to release guidelines around this practice, and its ruling is that nontraditional data is okay so long as a company doesn’t discriminate by factors like race, religion, and sexual orientation. Other states are likely to watch and follow suit. (The New York State Department of Financial Services, which released the guidance, declined to make a spokesperson available for comment.)
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