COVID-19 patients crowded into hospitals just nine months ago— but memories of the deadly January surge are fading, and sales of individual cash-value life insurance have cooled.
Market research firm Wink has shown what's happening in its new U.S. individual life sales report for the second quarter.
Wink bases its reports on voluntary issuer surveys. It asks insurers about traditional fixed universal life insurance, non-variable indexed universal life and whole life, but not about term life or group life.
In the latest quarter, sales of indexed universal life policies were a little higher than in the second quarter of 2021. Sales of traditional universal life and whole life policies were down.
MIB Group's application activity report for August suggests that working-age people's interest in new cash-value life insurance policies is especially soft.
What It Means
Life Happens is trying to sell U.S. workers this month, through the Life Insurance Awareness Month campaign, on the idea that protecting loved ones with life insurance is important.
The new survey results hint that inflation may now be doing more to hurt demand than interest in the COVID-19 pandemic is to help it.
If that trend keeps up, advisors may have to spend more time making sure that clients have adequate basic life insurance protection.
In the future, clients may be less likely to come in with life insurance policies that can be used as a source of emergency cash or as a supplement to retirement income arrangements.
The Numbers
Here's how the Wink life numbers have changed between the second quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2022:
