AI boosts early detection and treatment of dread disease for Discovery Life clients

Discovery Life paid out R11.5 billion in claims to clients and their families during the 2025 year.

The latest claims report from Discovery's insurance arm reflects how new health insights driven by artificial intelligence (AI) enable earlier detection and better outcomes.

The Personalised PayBack Booster was launched in 2025 to reward clients for completing health actions recommended through Discovery Health’s Personalised Health Pathways (PHP).

This uses AI to analyse each client's health profile to recommend personalised preventative actions and screenings.

By guiding clients toward the most suitable screenings, Discovery is increasingly able to detect serious conditions earlier, when treatment options are broader, and outcomes are often significantly better, said Dr Deidre Kotze, Chief Medical Officer at Discovery Life,

Clients who completed these preventative actions received R13,7 million in additional rewards accumulations through the Personalised PayBack Booster in 2025.

Overall, 65% of individual life policy payouts was for supporting clients through illness, disability and income loss, and shared-value payments for managing their health and wellness.

Of the total R11.5 billion paid in 2025, R6,9 billion went to individual life insurance clients

Of this R3,2 billion was paid through life cover benefits.

A further R1,8 billion for Severe Illness Benefits and R987 million for Capital Disability Benefits were paid as lump sums. R684 million was paid through Income Continuation Benefits, providing an income when clients can’t work because of a covered illness or disability.

Stephen Grootes interviews Gareth Friedlander, Deputy CEO at Discovery Life.

Friedlander points out that while people tend to think of life insurance as almost just payouts when you die, they paid R3.1 billion to life cover clients and actually more than that through things like severe illness, income protection and disability payouts.

"About 52% of our risk benefits went to clients for events that happen to them during their lifetime... and that is obviously becoming more and more important as people live longer."

While Discovery is really focused on early detection and better treatment of specifically cancer, the scope of this AI-driven programme is much wider, Friedlander remarks.

"It really synthesizes all the data around the client - their propensities, their health data, their records, and works out based on that profile, what is the next best action that they should take for their health. And then we throw incentives at them to do that."

"It's an an unbelievably powerful capability, this AI mechanism that's picking out a client, telling them 'we've workd out you need to go for this cancer screening' and ultimately saving a life with AI insight."

To hear more about this AI capability that is helping save lives with early detection and treatment, listen to the interview audio at the top of the article