Planners' Life Tools Face Sales Blahs

Sales of U.S. individual cash-value life insurance policies increased 2.7% between the first quarter of 2022 and the latest quarter, to $1.8 billion, according to new survey data from Wink.

Here’s what happened to sales of three types of cash-value policies, year-over-year:

• Indexed life: $727 million (+0.4%)
• Whole life: $1.1 billion (-4.8%)
• Fixed universal life: $95 million (-12%)

What It Means

Cash-value policies are the kinds of policies that U.S. financial advisors use in high-end planning.

Stable but dull first-quarter sales of cash-value policies might be a sign that clients and their advisors were waiting for banking sector turmoil to calm down and for Congress to act on the federal debt limit before setting up new estate planning arrangements or making other major long-range planning moves.