Its A New Ballgame For Life Insurance

In the 20th century, America saw a vast shift from collective self-sacrifice to individual self-reliance, from pluralism to separatism.

This vast shift is a challenge for the insurance industry. We see it in its productsin the new do-it-yourself vehicles in variable and mutual fund products, for instance.

The companies, even if part of conglomerates, have become separatists also. Case in point: Mortality experience differs sharply from one company to another, as you can see in the accompanying chart. This reflects differences among socio-economic markets served (lower, middle, and upper, as the chart shows). No doubt stringency of underwriting plays a key role, too.

I am bringing all this up because it has bearing on an important change that I would like to see in the life product domain. This change has to do with the Commissioners Standard Ordinary Tables.

My argument is that the industry may now need to be allowed to take a “separatist position,” if you will, with regard to whether it deviates downward from the CSO Tables or not. Let me tell you why I think this way.

As you know, the CSO Tables are compulsory mortality tables required by the states for the calculation of company reserve liabilities and cash values in life insurance. With the advent in recent decades of universal life and variable universal life, these tables have also been used to set maximum “cost of insurance rates” used within those products.

The CSO Tables have historically followed the dictates of our pluralist past. They have been set with high enough mortality margins to encompass the experience of practically all life companies. Because of these built-in margins in the Tables, regulators have never had to worry much about the actual experience of companies.

But today, we need to ask: Are life products suffering because those margins are too high? Is the business in a new ballgame because its growth and increased sophistication enable it to take greater responsibility in terms of setting mortality levels? In the interests of the insurance-buying public, should companies that exhibit experience that is significantly and consistently better than average be allowed to adjust CSO Tables downward, according to definite regulations that would be established?

I think so. Here is why.

Some changes involving the CSO Tables are already underway. For instance, adjustments are being allowed for term insurance (under the so-called Triple-X regulations.) Also, something of the sort is permitted under the “Illustrations” regulation.