Will life insurance costs rise due to COVID-19? Will vaccination status make a difference? Back at the start of the pandemic both regulators and the industry scrambled to assess the impact of COVID-19 on life insurers. The good news was that the mortality profile of the disease tended not to hit the insured population so hard. While we still believe that these estimates are fundamentally right and insurers are capable of managing the expected claims as the disease spreads throughout New Zealand, there is some evidence from overseas (such as this company in the US) that there could be some cost impacts. The results of the vaccination campaign may be big factors in whether we see these changes here. Our vaccination effort recently saw us overtake the US and the UK for the share of people that have had at least one jab - and that level looks likely to rise further over the coming months - but that still leaves the question of the un-vaccinated. Rob Stock writing for Stuff.co.nz has a good article on that at this link. I expect that vaccination status will be a factor in underwriting soon, and therefore on price.