Suicides linked to insurance payouts
(South China Morning Post)
Updated: 2006-05-15 10:45
One in 20 people who commit suicide in Hong Kong do so within two years of
taking out life insurance that allows their families to get payouts for their
deaths, a report has found.
About one in five people who kill themselves in Hong Kong have life insurance
and, of those, about a quarter take their lives within 24 months of taking out
the policies, according to the study by the Jockey Club Centre for Suicide
Research and Prevention.
Hong Kong has one of the world's highest suicide rates, despite a recent dip,
but insurance companies impose only a one-year exclusion period from the time a
policy is issued to allowing a claim for suicide -- one year less than the
two-year limit in the US and other countries.
Suicide payouts are costing the industry around $160 million a year and are
pushing up premiums. The centre's experts have now urged Hong Kong's life
insurance industry to impose a longer exclusion period before suicides are
eligible for payouts, and in the longer term to stop such payments altogether.
Payments averaged $200,000 per family.
Industry figures show the percentage of insurance payouts for suicide has
risen from about 7 per cent of the total value of payouts in 1997 to around 12
per cent in 2003, researchers say. That compares with around 2 per cent of
insurance payouts in the US.
Hong Kong Federation of Insurers executive director Peter Tam Chung-ho said
the industry would "support any initiative that will help reduce suicide
rates".
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