New York State Life Industry Produces More GDP Than Jamaica

The Eastman Kodak Co. headquarters building is pictured at right in this image of the Genesee River and the skyline of downtown Rochester, New York, on Friday, September 6, 2003. The plunge in Kodak shares to an 18-year low on Thursday has deepened concern among the factory workers and retail employees in Rochester who rely on Kodak for their livelihoods. Photographer: Doug Benz/Bloomberg News

The life insurance industry in New York state produced $20.3 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016, according to a new report commissioned by the The Life Insurance Council of New York (LICONY).

The New York life industry generated 1.3% of New York state's $1.5 trillion in 2016 GDP, according to the Ernst & Young team that prepared the report.

The New York state life industry is considerably smaller than the state's banking and securities industry.

The state's banking industry produced $139 billion in 2016 GDP, and the state's securities industry produced $93 billion in 2016 GDP.

But the New York state life industry was still so big that, all by itself, it would rank about 109th on the World Bank's list of country GDP totals for 2017. The New York state life sector has been producing more income than nations such as Zimbabwe, Botswana, Laos, Senegal and Jamaica.

LICONY hired Ernst & Young to create the report to help give policymakers and others a sense of how important the life insurance industry to the New York state economy.

In addition to providing figures for New York state, the report provides some comparisons of the New York state life insurance sector with the life insurance sectors in California, Connecticut and seven other states.

New York state, for example, had 85 life insurers domiciled in its jurisdiction in 2017. The only state with more life insurers was Texas: 117 life insurers were domiciled in Texas.