Suicide claims contribute to one of the leading claim cause categories, unnatural claims, in retail life insurance policies.  The traditional approach to managing this risk is to underwrite policyholders both medically and financially and rely on a 2 year exclusion clause. 

Recently, there has been a general increase in suicide claims and more notably an increase in suicides with no clear history of pre-diagnosed mental illness. This leads us to question the current underwriting and risk management approach to suicide.