This chart, based on U.S. government data, shows that the total number of deaths was a little below average from Feb. 1 through March 28, then started to climb. (Credit: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Voya Financial's group life insurance business has received only a few dozen COVID-19-related death claims so far, according to Mike Smith, the company's chief financial officer.
Smith told securities analysts Wednesday that he's not sure whether what the final claim total will really look like.
Voya is a New York-based company that owns life insurance operations built over the decades by companies like Security Life of Denver, Life of Georgia, Equitable of Iowa, ReliaStar and Aetna Life.
Voya's life insurance subsidiaries provide group life insurance for about 3 million people, Smith said. That amounts to about 1% of the life insurance policies and certificates in force in the United States. U.S. public health officials have reported about 70,000 COVID-19-related deaths so far.
"Under $1 million of claims is what we've seen so far," Smith said. "That's what we've seen to date. And, so, when you compare that to a base of insureds that's in the neighborhood of 3 million people, we should be seeing a lot more."
Resources
- A recording of Manulife's earnings call is available here.
- A recording of Voya's earnings call is available here.
- An article about how a midsize life insurer sees the economy is available here.
The number of death claims received so far may be very low, when compared with 1% of 70,000, because the COVID-19 mortality rate among workers with life insurance might be relatively low, Smith said.
But Smith said one question that Voya doesn't have an answer to is how much the low number of death claims is the result of a lag in reporting.
Voya will try to come up with a better estimate of the COVID-19 life insurance claim total when it reports its earnings for the second quarter, Smith said.
"But I think there'll probably be a fairly meaningful tail in the third quarter," Smith said. "We shouldn't think of this as just a second quarter event. And then it depends on what happens after that, in terms of the overall progression of the pandemic."
Smith was talking at an event that Voya organized to go over earnings for the first quarter with securities analysts.
