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ADVERTORIAL: See Risk More Clearly With Nonmedical Data

Author

Kevin Chalpan
Director, Product Management, LexisNexis Risk Solutions

November 2025

Meet Lynn and Lola, 49-year-old single mothers applying for life insurance. On paper, their medical files look nearly identical, and traditional underwriting would likely slot them into the same standard rate.

But there’s more to the story.

Lynn has worked as a school secretary for nearly two decades, owns her home, and has a spotless driving and credit history. Lola also has worked as a school secretary for nearly two decades, but she has two accounts in collections and has received two speeding tickets in two years.

Traditional underwriting can’t tell Lynn and Lola apart, but the difference in risk appears when you bring a predictive model using nonmedical data into the picture.

A Complete Picture

Medical data is the gold standard in underwriting, but it only tells part of the story. Nonmedical data, such as public records, driving history and credit information, add essential insights that traditional approaches miss. There’s a reason credit-related data are widely used in personal auto: Risky financial habits correlate with riskier lifestyle behaviors.

Importantly, nonmedical data help uncover favorable risks that traditional underwriting often overlooks — enabling better segmentation, fairer pricing, and a less invasive application process that reaches more people.

Accelerate With Confidence

Accelerated underwriting programs are table stakes, but many carriers rely on limited data like self-reporting, proxy data or simplified rules. That means good risks may end up in manual underwriting, and poor risks sometimes pass through at premiums that don’t match their actual risk, resulting in mortality slippage.

Consider Carrier A, which doesn’t use nonmedical data. Based on prescription data and self-reported questions, both Lynn and Lola are accelerated. Without nonmedical data, Lola’s higher-risk lifestyle goes undetected, and she slips into the book at a suboptimal price. Carrier B has the same accelerated process but adds nonmedical data. Lynn is accelerated while Lola is diverted to full underwriting. The result: Carrier B can more confidently accelerate the right risks while mitigating mortality slippage.

Untapped Profit Pools

For decades, the industry has been talking about the middle market protection gap, but most carriers focus on the same set of affluent buyers.

Real growth means reaching new customers. In many segments, traditional underwriting misses good risks. For example, Black, Hispanic, and female applicants, as well as those applying for lower policy face amounts, often see lower preferred placement rates than other segments.

Nonmedical data — when it includes the full spectrum of credit, property, driving and other public-record information — can help you more accurately determine the true risk profiles of these applicants. Using Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (BISG) analysis to estimate race and ethnicity, our research shows that nonmedical data could raise preferred placement by as much as:

Source: LexusNexus Risk Solutions internal data

Without nonmedical data, Carrier A keeps competing for the same affluent, clean risks, with traditional underwriting that tends to place middle-market segments as standard or declines. With nonmedical data, Carrier B can price fairly at lower face amounts and capture buyers the competition ignores — unlocking new premium pools, expanding market share, and building loyalty where others aren’t playing.

Enhance Risk Segmentation

The next challenge is people with chronic conditions. Most underwriting rules today are designed to err on the side of caution. If in doubt, applicants are routed to a substandard class or decline. That avoids surprises, but it also raises prices and makes the process harder for applicants with an impairment who have behaviors that make them less risky than average.

Medical data alone often treats everyone with a chronic condition the same. But combine medical with nonmedical data, and you can segment within that group. Two people may both have diabetes, but one is stable and managing it well. That’s a very different risk than someone who isn’t — and the combined view of data makes that distinction clear.

Carrier A sees a 52-year-old man with Type 2 diabetes applying for a $200,000 policy. He’s routed to a high-substandard class, priced accordingly, and he balks at the price, ultimately not accepting the policy. Carrier B layers in nonmedical indicators like healthy credit and a clean driving record, using a broader set of nonmedical attributes that go beyond the narrow focus of criminal history, bankruptcy and major DUI violations offered by some solution providers. He’s classified as a low substandard risk, and Carrier B gains a profitable policy that Carrier A overpriced.

See Data Clearly

Nonmedical data is already enabling carriers to scale accelerated underwriting without taking on more risk, capture new revenue in underserved markets and segment chronic risk populations more precisely. In doing so, they’re shifting adverse selection onto competitors who still rely only on traditional methods. The winners will be the carriers that act now to redefine risk — before the market moves ahead without them.

Get the Whole Story

Small moves today become big outcomes tomorrow. Start by adding nonmedical insight where it has the biggest lift: Accelerating with confidence, expanding into overlooked segments, and reclassifying edge cases.

LexisNexis Risk Classifier delivers nonmedical insights in real time, drawing on a uniquely broad set of attributes — credit, property, professional licenses, driving history and more — that are distilled into a numeric risk score. That breadth of data provides segmentation power that other solutions can’t match.

You can customize thresholds, set rules for when cases should be referred to an underwriter, and fast-track simpler cases, helping underwriters to focus on the files that truly require judgment.

With LexisNexis Risk Classifier, you don’t just see more. You can compete smarter.

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