Definition:Life & health
| Life & health | |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | L&H |
| Category | business mix |
| Aliases | Life and health |
| Related terms | Property & casualty, Business mix, Insurance revenue |
| Definition | The insurance business segment combining life insurance, savings and protection with health cover. |
❤️ Life & health is the insurance business segment that combines cover tied to human life with cover for medical costs: life insurance and protection, long-term savings and retirement products in insurance wrappers, and health policies that pay for care. Insurers abbreviate it L&H. The segment's unifying trait is the person at the center of the contract; its products otherwise range from a one-year health policy to a savings contract that runs for decades.
⏳ The two halves work on different clocks. Health business resembles property-casualty mechanics: annual contracts, claims paid within months, results driven by medical inflation and pricing discipline. Life business is long-duration: the insurer collects premiums for years, credits returns on accumulated savings, and pays benefits far in the future, so investment results and assumption changes matter as much as current-year claims. Savings-heavy contracts carry large investment components, which is why the segment's IFRS 17 insurance revenue sits far below the premiums it collects, and why measures like the contractual service margin and new-business value do the analytical work that premium growth does elsewhere.
💹 For a composite group, the segment contributes stability and capital intensity at once: mortality and morbidity results run statistically steady across large books, while guarantees written into savings products bind capital and expose the insurer to interest rates for decades. Demographics drive the demand. Aging societies buy retirement income and health cover in growing volumes, which keeps the segment central to insurers' growth stories in Europe and Asia alike. In segment reporting, L&H figures span organizational units; at AXA, the label collects the life, savings, and health books written across its markets.