How Much Do Life Insurers Profit from Tobacco?

In an era of corporate wellness programs and socially screened investment funds, some of the world's largest life-insurance companies still own billions of dollars in tobacco-industry stocks, Harvard physicians assert in a new report.

These latest findings, published this week in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), suggest that several life and disability insurers, both in the U.S. and abroad, have yet to acquiesce to calls from the American Medical Association and others to divest their holdings in companies such as Reynolds American, Lorillard and Philip Morris. Many insurers cited in the letter say the study wildly overstates their investments, but the authors disagree...

Time: How Much Do Life Insurers Profit from Tobacco?