Older Consumers Keep Submitting More Life Applications: MIB

Consumers ages 60 and older continued to keep the U.S. life insurance market growing in October.

Individual life application activity was 1.4% higher last month than in October 2018, according to MIB Group Inc.

(Related: Life Application Activity Continues to Recover: MIB)

The year-over-year growth was down from 1.9% in September.

The Index

MIB is a Braintree, Massachusetts-based consortium that helps U.S. and Canadian life insurers share information for underwriting purposes.

MIB bases the monthly life application activity index on the number of applications life insurers put through MIB systems.

Activity by Age Group

MIB breaks out application activity data for people in three age groups: applicants ages 0 to 44; applicants ages 45 through 59; and applicants ages 60 and older.

From January through September, activity levels have been strongest for consumers ages 60 and older, and weakest for consumers ages 0 to 44. That trend continued in October.

Here’s how October life application activity looked when broken out by age group:

• Ages 0-44: Down 0.4%
• Ages 45-59: 0.9%
• Ages 60 and older: 6.9%

Although the growth rate for consumers ages 60 and older was strong in October, the 6.9% increase was down from a year-over-year increase of 12.5% in September.

The 0.4% drop for applicants under 45 was much narrower than the 2.2% year-over-year drop for that age group in September.

Resources

A copy of the latest MIB life activity update is available here.

— Read Where Did the Young Life Insurance Applicants Go?, on ThinkAdvisor.

— Connect with ThinkAdvisor Life/Health on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.