Economic Concerns Hurt Q4 Individual Life Sales: LIMRA Executive
Indexed universal life policies performed well.
U.S. sales of individual life insurance policies cooled in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to LIMRA.
Insurers told LIMRA that the total number of policies sold fell 10% between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the latest quarter.
Annualized premiums from new policy sales fell 13%.
John Carroll, a senior vice president at LIMRA, said the decrease was due partly to tough comparisons with strong 2021 sales and also partly to softening demand.
“Consumers’ worries about inflation and the economy increased, and concerns about COVID-19 declined,” Carroll said.
What It Means
Economic turmoil might be weakening clients’ life insurance arrangements.
The Data
LIMRA — a Windsor, Connecticut-based research organization — bases its quarterly life sales data on insurer surveys.
Here’s what happened to new annualized premiums from the sale of five types of policies between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the latest quarter:
- Term life: -5%
- Indexed universal life: -5%
- Variable universal life: -13%
- Whole life: -19%
- Fixed universal life: -31%
Here’s what happened to policy counts:
- Indexed universal life: +15%
- Term life: -8%
- Whole life: -12%
- Variable universal life: -27%
- Fixed universal life: -38%
In the public life survey summaries, LIMRA shows how much sales have changed in terms of percentages. The group does not report the dollar amounts.
Another organization, Wink, says the insurers that participated in its life insurance sales fourth-quarter survey generated $1.2 billion in premiums from whole life sales, $752 million from indexed life sales and $110 million from fixed universal life sales. Wink did not report on term life sales or variable universal life sales.
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