Indexed Universal Life Sales Rise 3.4%: Wink

By Allison Bell

June 13, 2017 at 10:57 PM

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Indexed universal life insurance sales grew a little in the first quarter, according to Wink's Sales & Market Report.

Sales increased to $447 million, up 3.4% from the total for the first quarter of 2016.

Wink reported those figures in a summary of results from a survey of 100 U.S. life carriers.

Wink has been collecting indexed universal life insurance sales data since 1997.

The Pleasant Hill, Iowa-based company has just started collecting data on sales of fixed universal life insurance and whole life insurance. The insurers that participated in the company's latest survey reported generating $485 million in fixed universal life sales in the first quarter, and $933 million in whole life sales.

Because the fixed universal life data series and the whole life data series are new, Wink has no comparable sales figures for those products for the first quarter of 2016.

A universal life insurance policy is a permanent life insurance policy that combines a death benefit with a mechanism for building up the policy cash value.

An indexed universal life policy is a universal life policy with a crediting rate, or interest rate, tied to the performance of an investment index, such as the S&P 500.

Wink says Transamerica, a unit of Aegon N.V., was the market share leader in the first quarter in the market for indexed universal life. Prudential Financial Inc. was the market share leader in the fixed indexed universal life market.

In the indexed universal life market, the average target premium was $8,865.

— Read 5 Uses for Life Insurance That Most People Haven't Thought Of on ThinkAdvisor.