ONS data reveal roughly 2.8 million working-age Britons are inactive due to long-term illness, 700,000 more than before COVID‑19 - and higher than in comparable advanced economies. A House of Lords report earlier this year, found that Britons aren't, in fact, any sicker - they just say they are presumably to claim benefits. This persistent absence from the labour market narrows the pool of available talent, not just across the economy, but acutely within insurance, which relies on specialist skills from underwriting to risk analytics.