People who face a sudden spike in their term life insurance premiums, because the level-premium term is ending, seem to be good at at predicting whether they're likely to die, according to a new term life report from the Society of Actuaries.
Policyholders ages 60 and older who keep their term life coverage in place after the premiums go up are at least twice as likely to die as they were to die during the level-premium term.
The mortality gap is even bigger for older insureds, and for insureds with more coverage coverage.
Insureds ages 70 and older who hang on to $1 million or more in coverage after either a 10-year or 15-year level-premium term expires have a death rate that's 7.9 times higher than the death rate for during the level-premium term.
When insureds ages 70 and older keep $1 million or more in coverage after a 15-year term expires, the death rate is close to 15 times higher than the death rate during the level-term period.
Term vs. Whole Life
A traditional whole life policy is designed to cover the insured until age 100, or even till age 120, and the premiums are supposed to stay the same for the insured's entire life.
A term life policy, in contrast, is aimed at people who need a large amount of affordable insurance coverage for a relatively short period of time. A typical term life policy might have a provision that keeps the premiums level for a period of just five, 10, 15 or 20 years. After the term expires, the insurer can increase the premiums.
In many cases, the researchers found, the new premium is more than five times higher than the old premium.
About 41% of the new individual life policies purchased in 2019 were term life policies, according to the American Council of Life Insurers.
The Study
Four actuaries at Scor — Aisling Bradfield, Carolyn Covington, Rebecca Reppert and Julien Tomas — prepared the new U.S. Post-Level Term Lapse and Mortality Experience Report for the SOA.
The SOA commissioned similar studies in 2010 and 2014.
