Life Insurers Face 2% Activity Drop in May: MIB

By Allison Bell

June 08, 2017 at 08:25 AM

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MIB Group Inc. says U.S. individual life insurance application activity was 2% lower in May than it was in May 2016.

The Braintree, Massachusetts-based organization says activity dropped 2.8% for consumers ages 60 and older, and 5.2% for consumers ages 45 to 59.

Activity for consumers younger than 45 held steady.

Overall activity for the period from January through May was 3.3% lower than the level of activity for the comparable period in 2016.

The activity level for May looks healthier than the activity level for the first quarter.

First-quarter life application activity was 4.5% lower than the activity level for the first quarter of 2016.

Life insurers use MIB systems to verify the information consumers give on more than 90% of life insurance applications submitted in the United States and Canada. One factor that could throw off MIB data could be life insurer decisions to skip the MIB checking process for some or all applications.

The effects of the "baby bust" that occurred from 1965 through 1978 on the number of people ages 45 to 59 might be cutting the number of sales to people in that age group.

The oldest people born during the "echo boom" that started in 1978 are now 39, and the effects of the echo boom on the number of U.S. residents ages 18 to 44 might be helping increase sales to people in that age range.

— Read Life insurance application activity rose 0.3% in December on ThinkAdvisor.

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