(Credit: Allison Bell/ALM)
COVID-19 may have pushed more consumers to apply for life insurance, but the increase in awareness may not yet be doing much for the dollar value of new sales.
Wink Inc. says the dollar value of sales of all of the types of non-variable individual life products it tracks fell at least 6% between the second quarter of 2019.
Resources
- A summary of Wink's latest life results is available here.
- An article about MIB group application activity numbers is available here.
MIB Group, a nonprofit life insurance industry consortium that helps life insurers share some of the data used in life insurance underwriting, says the number of life applications processed through its systems was 1% higher in the latest quarter than in the second quarter of 2019.
Methods
Wink bases its numbers on results from a voluntary issuer survey.
The Des Moines, Iowa-based company collects data on whole life sales and fixed universal life sales. It also collects data for an indexed life category that includes both indexed universal life and indexed whole life.
Wink has more complete data for some products than others.
The company says it believes it has sales data from life insurers that account for 99% of indexed life production, 76% of universal life production, and 37% of whole life production.
The Numbers
Here's how the Wink life numbers looked in the second quarter, and how those numbers have changed since the second quarter of 2019:
- Indexed Life: $495 million (down 6%)
- Whole Life: $930 million (down 10%)
- Non-Variable Universal Life: $642 (down 17%)
- Fixed Universal Life: $147.5 million (down 40%)
Moore's Assessment
Sheryl Moore, Wink's president, said in a commentary included with the results that whole life appears to have a brighter future than other life product Wink tracks, because of the effects of regulatory changes on indexed life products and the effects of low interest rates on fixed universal life products.
