Uganda Unveils Mortality Table for Life Insurers

Insurance Regulatory Authority of Uganda has unveiled the first ever mortality table for life insurance companies in the country to help determine pricing, which may decrease or increase payments popularly known as premiums for new life insurance products and annuities.

The table dubbed Uganda Assured lives mortality table (UA 2015/19) came into effect August last year, said IRA CEO Ibrahim Kaddunabbi Lubega.

Mortality table is a statistical table showing the rate of deaths occurring in a defined population during a selected time interval, or survival rates from birth to death. The tables are typically used to inform the construction of insurance policies and other forms of liability management.

However, it remains unclear on whether the locally developed mortality table in partnership with the World Bank will lead to an increase or decrease of premiums to life insurance products.

Kaddunabbi said insurers have been using mortality tables from other countries, specifically South Africa, Kenya and sometimes India in setting prices for life insurance products and annuities which could be misrepresenting the true picture of mortality of the Ugandan population.

Uganda insurance sector has nine life insurance companies and recorded a 17% growth in insurance premiums to hs324billon in 2020.

Emanuel Mwaka, chairperson life insurance committee at the Uganda Insurers Association said the new mortality table now caters for the local perspective and thus able to correctly price the products.

"From an insurance practitioner perspective is that when you work with data that is not yours, you make some assumptions to try to bend the results to sort of meet requirements for your own market. Now this brings in the aspect of subjectivity which now this mortality tables for Ugandan takes away," he said.

He said for instance that using mortality tables from Britain to price local insurance products may not give a true picture of the country's mortality because it does not include perspectives of malaria because the British population doesn't suffer from Malaria.

"But with our local mortality table we are able to include this in our pricing because we know the risk associated with malaria to our population," he said.