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Surviving COVID-19 May Affect Insurance Purchases: Aflac

By Allison Bell

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What You Need to Know

  • COVID-19 survivors were more than twice as likely to add critical illness insurance.
  • They were also more likely to add life insurance.
  • They were more than twice as likely to add a mental health benefit.

Workers who have survived COVID-19 were much more likely than other workers who took a recent Aflac survey to say they had added a health-related benefit since the pandemic started.

The COVID-19 survivors in the sample were two or three times as likely to report buying four types of benefits products.

If Aflac’s survey results reflect what’s happening in the U.S. insurance market as a whole, the new interest in health-related insurance could be helpful to agents, brokers and insurance company sales executives, and challenging for insurance company underwriters and pricing actuaries who have concerns about how COVID-19 might affect people’s health in the future.

Aflac conducted the employee survey over the summer. The sample included responses from about 2,000 U.S. workers.

The Purchasing Gap

Aflac did not say how many of the employees in the sample had tested positive for COVID-19 at some point, but here’s how the benefits purchases for COVID-19 survivors and other survey participants compared:

Added Life Insurance

  • COVID-19 survivors: 38%
  • Other workers: 16%

Added Hospital Indemnity Insurance

  • COVID-19 survivors: 2%
  • Other workers: 9%

Added Critical Illness Insurance

  • COVID-19 survivors: 26%
  • Other workers: 12%

Added Mental Health Services Benefit

  • COVID-19 survivors: 24%
  • Other workers: 10%

(Image: Adobe Stock)

Allison Bell

Think_Allison