What type of life insurance do life insurance agents own?

Here’s a frightening statistic: 3 percent of advisors whose primary focus is life insurance don’t own any life insurance. Only 3 percent, you might say – that’s not bad, right? That’s just 3 out of every 100 life insurance agents. Consider this, though: Three percent represents a higher proportion of life insurance agents who don’t own the product they’re selling than the percentage of investment advisors (1.8 percent), P&C agents (1 percent) and employee benefits brokers (2 percent) who don’t own life insurance.

These figures come from the 2013 National Underwriter Life Insurance Study, for which we surveyed more than 2,000 advisors across the U.S. this summer to ask about their experiences selling life insurance.

Of the remaining 97 percent of life agents who do own life insurance, the majority own term insurance. Maybe they have subscribed to the mantra to “buy term and invest the rest.” Only 45 percent of life insurance agents believe strongly enough in the value of the inside cash build-up that whole life offers to buy it themselves.