Indexed Life Insurance Sales Climbed 7.6% Since Q2 2022: Wink

Some of the same forces that have been increasing indexed annuities in recent years pushed up sales of indexed life insurance in the second quarter, according to new survey data from Wink.

Sales of the kinds of U.S. individual non-variable, cash-value life insurance policies that Wink tracks increased 7.6% between the second quarter of 2022 and the latest quarter, to $1.9 billion,

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

• Indexed life: $813 million (+18.5%)
• Whole life: $1.1 billion (-0.9%)
• Fixed universal life: $102 million (-2.8%)

Sales of indexed life products were the highest Wink has recorded.

What It Means

Many clients like the idea of buying life insurance with a death benefit that can grow.

Many insurers like selling a life insurance policy set up in such a way that they can use ordinary stock index derivatives to manage the risk associated with managing the assets supporting the policy obligations.

Sheryl Moore, Wink CEO, suggested that the strong performance of the indexed products could soon affect the level of competition in that part of the market.

“If sales keep setting records like this, the par whole life carriers will have no choice but to develop their own indexed solution,” she said.

Cash-Value Life Basics

Cash-value policies can help clients support many types of long-range planning, including charitable gift planning, long-term care planning and college cost planning, as well as estate planning.

The issuer of a non-variable indexed life insurance ties growth in the death benefits to the performance of an investment index, such as the S&P 500 index. Because the policy is a non-variable insurance product, it must protect a policy owner who follows the policy rules against investment-market-related loss of principal.

Sheryl Moore. Credit: Wink