For every dollar spent on cancer rehabilitation in Australia's life insurance sector, insurers recorded a return of nearly $26, a Swiss Re study has found, delivering what may be the strongest evidence yet for structured recovery programs in a market where claims costs continue to climb.
The findings, published in Swiss Re's Rehabilitation Watch 2025 report, drew from 2,348 customers across 12 providers, including all seven of the country's largest life insurers.
Cancer customers posted the highest return-to-work rate of any condition studied, at 71%, with 91% of the cancer-specific data coming from a single provider, digital health firm Osara Health.
Australia's life insurance market, valued at $24.2 billion by IBISWorld, has been contracting at a compound annual rate of 0.8% over the past five years. Mental health has become the industry's most pressing cost burden.
The Council of Australian Life Insurers has reported that mental health-related claims payouts reached $2.2 billion in 2024, nearly double the figure from five years earlier.
It is against that backdrop that the cancer rehabilitation numbers carry particular weight. Described as the first report to aggregate rehabilitation outcomes across the Australian life insurance market, the study was analyzed and published independently by Swiss Re.
Osara Health did not commission or author it, though the company's role as the dominant cancer support provider in the dataset is being disclosed publicly for the first time.
Dr. Raghav Murali Ganesh (pictured above), Osara's chief executive and a radiation oncologist, said the study puts a figure on a gap the industry has long acknowledged.
"For years, the insurance sector has known there's a gap between clinical treatment and full recovery," Ganesh said. "This study puts a number on what filling that gap is worth: 25:1."
The report also pointed to timing as a decisive factor. Cancer customers referred to rehabilitation within six weeks achieved a 79% return-to-work rate, yet the median referral time stood at 42 weeks. The disparity suggests that life insurance providers could substantially improve outcomes by initiating cancer rehabilitation earlier in the claims process.
Ganesh said the independent validation from Swiss Re, built on data from Osara's program, confirms that structured cancer support ranks among the highest-returning rehabilitation investments available to insurers.
