If life took an unexpected turn tomorrow
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If life took an unexpected turn tomorrow
Most people expect life to follow a timeline. Build the business, raise the family, retire, pass it on.
Our claims data suggests the timeline is less reliable than the plan assumes. Between 2020 and August 2026, Howden Private Wealth handled 81 death claims across Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and EMEA. The youngest client was 40. Nearly three in ten claims involved clients under 60.
None of these were outcomes anyone planned for. They were, however, the outcomes each plan had to work for.
Cancer and heart disease still lead
Cancer and cardiovascular disease accounted for approximately 65% of the claims we settled – pancreatic, lung and breast cancers, heart attacks, cardiac arrests and heart failure among them.
Medical advances mean more people survive a first diagnosis and live longer after it. Yet serious illness remains the largest single threat in our data to family wealth, business continuity and the long-term plans built around them.
The biggest surprise? Many were still in their prime
Nearly three in ten claims involved clients under 60, and more than half involved clients under 70. Across the book, ages ranged from 40 to 93.
These are the years when financial responsibility is heaviest. A mortgage still running. Children still in school or university. A business still growing, often with the client at its centre.
For families at this stage, the question is rarely how much wealth has been built. It is whether that wealth can keep supporting the people who depend on it if the plan is cut short.
The causes change with age, too. Cancer was the most common cause across our claims, yet none of the clients who passed on before 50 died of cancer. For the youngest, the causes were accidents, injuries and sudden medical events – the risks that give little or no warning.
Life doesn't always give us time to prepare
Most policies in our book had been in force for more than five years before a claim. But 21 of the 81 had been in force for five years or less, and 10 for two years or less.
Some of those were recent additions to older cover. One client built up five policies over twelve years, the most recent taken out about a year before the claim. Cover that grows with a family's wealth is cover that still fits when it is needed.
Nobody applying for cover knows when it will be called on. Illness and accidents rarely arrive on schedule, which is why with the right planning in place, families can face uncertainty with greater confidence and financial security.
Wealth and liquidity are not the same thing
Many of our clients hold most of their wealth in property, investment portfolios or private businesses. In the event of death, these assets may take time to access. If funds are needed urgently, families may be forced to sell at an unfavourable price.
The average death benefit across our claims was US$7.1 million. The largest was US$75 million. At that scale, a policy does more than provide for a family. It gives them time.
The youngest claims were also the largest. For clients who died before 50, the median benefit was US$10 million, against around US$4 million for everyone else. Most of that cover was taken out in the client's twenties or thirties.
Immediate liquidity can help a family:
- maintain their standard of living while the estate is settled
- meet tax, debt and business obligations as they fall due
- keep a business running, or fund the buy-out of a partner's share
- avoid selling long-term investments or family assets at the wrong moment
Where beneficiaries are properly nominated, proceeds can often be paid directly to them, outside the estate and without waiting on probate. It is one of the reasons nominations deserve regular review: at the time of writing, one claim in our data is still waiting on probate.
A longer life needs planning too
The data points the other way as well. The oldest client in our claims was 93, and in a small number of cases the underlying condition was dementia or Parkinson's disease. A longer life brings its own risk: losing the ability to make decisions while still alive.
September is World Alzheimer's Month, and it is a useful reminder that almost every decision in a wealth plan, from changing a nomination to restructuring ownership or setting up a trust, needs the client's own signature. Once that is no longer possible, the wealth can remain intact while the ability to direct it does not.
Protection planning is often framed around dying too soon. Increasingly, it is also about acting while every option is still open.
A timely reminder
Every family's circumstances are different, and no plan can anticipate everything. What a plan can do is keep pace with the life it was written for, which is why the best time to review cover is before it is needed.
After all, life insurance can't change what happens. It can help protect the people who matter most when it matters most.