Shoppers kept U.S. individual life insurance underwriting systems busy in December. Overall application activity was 6.5% higher last month than in December 2022, and it was up by at least 8% for three of the age groups that MIB Group tracks, according to new MIB activity data.
For all of 2023, activity was up 2.9%, with term life and whole life activity increasing by about 2% and universal life activity rising 6.9%.
Universal life policies give life insurers the ability to share interest rate and investment market risk with the policy owners. In exchange, the policy owners may get higher crediting rates and more flexible premium payment schedules.
What it means: The U.S. life market was choppy in 2023, with activity levels for each age group moving up and down along its own path from month to month.
The data: Life insurers in the United States and Canada formed MIB to help them share some of the resources used to check insurance applications.
The Braintree, Massachusetts-based group creates monthly life activity index reports by looking at its systems’ processing statistics.
Age breakouts: Here’s how U.S. life application activity changed between December 2022 and December 2023 for five age groups:
- Ages 0-30: +8.3%
- Ages 31-40: +8.0%
- Ages 51-60: 0%
- Ages 61-70: +4.6%
- Ages 71 and older: +12.4%
Coverage costs: Policygenius, a web broker, publishes monthly price charts based on the prices that term life issuers offer their customers.
The lowest price is for a 25-year-old female nonsmoker who needs $250,000 in death benefits. This month, that’s $14.58, up from $14.19 in January 2023.
The highest price is for a 55-year-old male smoker who needs $1 million in death benefits. That cost fell to $1,006.88, from $1,011.92.