How People Who Eat Their Insurance Broccoli Are Different: AIG

Rod Rishel (Photo: AIG)

A few years ago, judges who disliked the Affordable Care Act individual health insurance ownership requirement likened a federal requirement for consumers to buy insurance to a law requiring people to eat broccoli.

This summer, as life insurers and producers head toward the September, and the Life Insurance Awareness Month campaign, one ho question is why some consumers do agreat job eating their life insurance, retirement savings, and general personal finance broccoli?

Analysts at American International Group Inc. addressed that question by sponsoring an online survey of 8,100 U.S. adults, ages 21 through 64, in the second half of 2017.

One of the things AIG did was include a mini personality survey.

The company came up with a rough measure of participants’ disposition by asking them to agree or disagree with statements such as “In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.”

AIG found that, using its gauge, the life insurance policyholders were more optimistic than the uninsured: 56% of the policyholders were classified as optimistic, compared with 48% of the uninsured participants.

(Related: Life Insurer CEO: Vision Matters)

Other AIG survey findings:

Age: Median age was 43 for life insurance owners and 39 for the non-owners.