Global obesity has tripled since 1975, but newer medications such as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications could potentially reverse this trend and ultimately reduce obesity-related morbidity and mortality rates, according to new research from Munich Re's
GLP-1 agonists like semaglutides, more commonly known as the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, and tirzepatide, under the brand name Zepbound, are approved for weight loss management in adults and are approved
The study leveraged a de-identified dataset that included selective medical and prescription information on 41 million adults in the United States. Data spanned from 2015 to Jan. 1, 2025.
Munich Re's webinar, "
Timothy Meagher, vice president and medical director at Munich Re, Canada, in using AI to better understand health and mortality rates, said, "Underwriting will be improved, and insurability should expand."
Munich Re's research reveals that GLP-1 medications yield 0.2% to 0.5% annual mortality improvement, realized over a 20-year period, and studies show 15% to 21% weight loss outcomes – an unprecedented result. A projection of data analysis shows a 21% mortality reduction for non-severely obese individuals 40% mortality reduction for severely obese
individuals in the general population over the next two decades.
Meagher shared that
"By analyzing thousands upon thousands of electronic health records, and looking at people's natural history over multiple years, you can actually begin to predict what that trajectory is going to look like way sooner than we possibly could…" stated Meagher. "Inevitably, what we will see here is improved mortality. We certainly are going to have vastly enriched electronic health records and that's the practical aspect of this that will be important for insurers."
By analyzing electronic health records, images and biomedical information, AI technologies will also provide researchers with new predictive associations that redefine health.
"We're also going to get a better understanding of what 'health' is. We have a very vague notion of health, when we underwrite 50 years old we treat them all the same. We use underwriting to try and pair it down and make it more accurate," explained Meagher. "But we use chronological health as a starting point, and I think we will see biological age coming in and supplementing chronological age as an underwriting element."






