Variable Universal Life Won Life Insurance in 2018

LIMRA does not include the actual policy counts or premium totals in the survey results summary available to the public.

But LIMRA estimated in a separate report, in January, that issuers generated about $14.2 billion in new annualized premiums from individual life in 2018, and $14.5 billion in new annualized premiums from individual life in 2019.

The American Council of Life Insurers has reported that U.S. residents bought 10.5 million individual life insurance policies in 2017.

ThinkAdvisor calculations based on LIMRA and ACLI figures suggest that annualized premiums from new individual life policies have been averaging about $1,300 to $1,400 per policy.

Here’s what happened to the number of new policies sold in the fourth quarter, when compared with sales for the fourth quarter of 2017:

• Universal Life (37% of the market): -4%
• VUL (8% of the market): +10%
• Term Life (20% of the market):  +1%
• Whole Life (35% of the market): -0.5%

Resources

A link to the new LIMRA survey summary is available here.

— Read Life Activity Continues to Move in a Strange Way, on ThinkAdvisor.

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