A new disability income table from KPMG shows 45-year old women are 94% more likely to make claims than their male counterparts.

The table has been updated for the first time in 20 years, in conjunction with the Financial Services Council.

It features analysis based on more than 30,000 claims from 2007-11, making it the most up-to-date disability income table in the world, KPMG says.

The data is based on more than 2.17 million policy years and 31,256 new claims collected from 10 insurers, representing more than 12 million claims days and more than 27,000 claims recoveries. It has been developed using insights from a generalised linear model, and has a modern structure with separate factors for deriving incidence and termination rates.

The table confirms the importance of rating factors such as age, gender and occupation.

For the first time, the impacts of policy duration, benefit period and cause of claims – such as mental illness, nervous disorder and musculoskeletal – are quantified.

KPMG Actuarial Partner Briallen Cummings says it includes data and analytics insights that “were unimaginable 20 years ago. We believe this table will enable the industry to make much better allowance of these factors for pricing and reserving, which should in turn improve consumer experience.”