U.S. Individual Life Applications Climb 18.5%

By Allison Bell

News April 16, 2021 at 09:58 AM

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U.S. consumers kept individual life insurance underwriting systems busy in March.

Individual life application volume climbed 18.5% between March 2020 and March 2021, according to MIB Group Inc.'s new individual life application activity report.

Many U.S. communities began imposing COVID-19-related lockdowns in the middle of March 2020, but MIB says results for March 2021 also look great when compared with results from before the pandemic era.

Individual life application activity was 14% higher this past month than in March 2018, and 22% higher than in March 2019.

In February, application activity was up 7.3% year-over-year.

MIB's Data

Life insurers started MIB, as the Medical Information Bureau, in 1902. The insurer-owned consortium gives life insurers in the United States and Canada a vehicle they can use to share some of the data used in the life insurance underwriting process, to detect errors and fraud.

The MIB uses its application checking system volume to calculate the monthly, quarterly and annual life application activity figures.