(Credit: Thinkstock-LHP)
Executives at Globe Life say the company is continuing to assume that it will incur about $2 million in life insurance claims for every 10,000 in U.S. COVID-19-related deaths.
The McKinney, Texas-based life insurer is assuming, in midpoint projections, that the total number of U.S. COVID-19-related deaths for 2020 will increase to about 280,000 by the end of the year, from 225,000 today.
The company is assuming that COVID-19 will kill about 100,000 to 220,000 people in the United States in 2021, with a midpoint assumption of 160,000.
Resources
- Links to Globe Life earnings resources are available here.
- An article about Globe Life's second quarter earnings is available here.
Globe Life executives talked about how they see the COVID-19 pandemic during a conference call they held to go over the company's earnings for the third quarter. The executives may reflect what executives at many companies are thinking when they try to project the future of the pandemic.
Globe Life executives emphasized that the actual 2021 COVID-19 mortality figures will reflect factors that are hard to determine, such as progress with efforts to develop a vaccine against the virus that causes COVID-19.
The third quarter started July 1 and ended Sept. 30.
Earnings
Globe Life is reporting $189 million in net income for the third quarter on $1.2 billion in revenue, compared with $202 million in net income on $1.1 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2019.
Here's what happened to premium revenue for the company's three main lines of business:
- Life Insurance: $674 million (up 7%)
- Health Insurance: $288 million (up 7%)
- Annuity: $1 million (Down 67%)
Here's what happened to new net sales:
- Life Insurance: $128 million (up 21%)
- Health Insurance: $45 million (flat)
Globe Life relies heavily on sales through a traditional agent sales network as well as through direct-to-consumer programs.
The total number of agents increased 20% between the third quarter of 2019 and the end of the latest quarter, to 13,626. The number of new agents increased 25%, to 9,716.
