Mortality Table Shift Hits Q1 Non-Variable Life Sales

By Allison Bell

News May 28, 2019 at 03:45 AM

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New U.S. sales of non-variable, individual life insurance coverage were soft in the first quarter, according to new insurer survey data from Wink Inc.

The firm now tracks sales of three types of life insurance: indexed life insurance, universal life insurance, and whole life.

Combined sales of those three types of products fell to $1.8 billion in the latest quarter, from 7.3% from the total for the first quarter of 2018.

(Related: Indexed Life Sales Keep Growing: Wink)

Sales of indexed life increased 1%, year-over-year, to $491 million.

Sales of whole life fell 2.8%, to about $1 billion.

Sales of universal life fell 29.5%, to $277 million

Sheryl Moore, president of Wink, said in a statement that she believes individual life sales were slow mainly because of a wave of changes related to the shift to the new 2017 Commissioners Standard Ordinary mortality tables.

"If companies' sales aren't down because their field force isn't up-to-date on their reprice for the new mortality tables, they are down because they are too busy working on new products to focus on sales," Moore said in the statement.