The baby boomers are rushing toward their oldest-old years, they need guaranteed private income to supplement Social Security, and life and annuity issuers are building up the piles of assets that will create some of that guaranteed income.
The American Council of Life Insurers tells the story in charts in the 80th edition of the ACLI Life Insurers Fact Book.
“Life insurers” write many products, including annuities, in addition to life insurance policies.
The ACLI’s Fact Books began showing up when the first baby boomers were born, in 1946. The books serve as statistical encyclopedias documenting insurers’ efforts to protect clients against disability, premature death, unexpected longevity and other risks.
The 2025 edition of the ACLI Fact Book includes everything from the number of people who work in the U.S. insurance industry (3 million) to the total amount of cash paid in connection with life insurance and annuity arrangements ($707 billion).
Many of the tables are based on data collected by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
In a rankings section, one closely watched table shows a list of the life and annuity issuers with the most assets in 2024.
For a look at the 10 issuers at the top of the list, see the gallery accompanying this article.
The life of the giants: To rank in the top 10 on the life and annuity issuer asset list, an issuer had to have $300 billion in assets.
The 10 issuers included ended 2024 with $3.7 trillion in assets, up 5.3% from the total they recorded a year earlier.
The issuers’ own asset growth rates ranged from 1.2% to 12.3%. Just one increased assets by more than 10%.
What it means: Retirement advisors could think of the big life and annuity issuers as a group of giant, sophisticated, patient retirement income planners that have an ongoing need to provide ongoing cash distributions to customers.
The issuers beat one key benchmark — the increase in overall U.S. gross domestic product, which grew by 2.8% -- but the issuers fell behind the 8.2% growth in household net worth recorded by Federal Reserve system economists.
From the perspective of the insurers, returns have been good, but perhaps not spectacular enough to eliminate worries about the impact of the aging of the baby boomers.
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