Discovery’s Guy Chennells Explains Surprising Risk Trends During The Pandemic

Guy Chennells is the Product Head for Discovery Employee Benefits and has been with Discovery Limited since October 2017. He is responsible for product, profitability, and customer experience design across employee benefits, including group risk and umbrella funds. Chennells is an innovator and a thought leader, and is passionate about using new tools to tackle any challenge in the old industry. In this episode of What’s Next, Chennells discusses the significant increases in Discovery’s Group Risk claims profile and an unexpected difference between 2020 and 2021 claims data. He suggests possible reasons for this discrepancy, including the effects of the pandemic and inaccurate COVID-19 death reporting. Chennells highlights several surprising statistics related to life cover during the pandemic, as well as how motor vehicle accident claims have been affected by national lockdowns. Discovery’s data interestingly shows that funeral claims increased more than life cover claims, and Chennells offers possible explanations for this. He also unpacks Discovery’s Income Continuation Benefit and highlights the connected claims trends that the group has witnessed. He closes by discussing how Discovery’s Vitality system has observed significantly higher COVID-19 survival rates in customers who live more healthily.