For Clients in Their 70s, Mortality Was Still High in Q4

By Allison Bell

News June 13, 2023 at 03:38 PM

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Clients in their 70s are still more likely to die now than they were when the COVID-19 pandemic started.

A team at the Society of Actuaries found that, in the fourth quarter of 2022, the number of death claims filed for people in their 70s with fully underwritten individual life insurance was 9% higher than the average for the fourth quarter in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

The overall number of individual life claims was 4% higher than the pre-pandemic average.

What It Means

The kinds of healthy, relatively affluent people who have fully underwritten life insurance and annuities continue to face a high level of uncertainty about their life expectancy.

The Analysis

The SOA team based its work on early claim data from 28 insurers.

The mortality figures include claims for deaths from all causes, including COVID-19 itself, long COVID, the effects of the pandemic on the economy and the health care system, the effects of efforts to treat and prevent COVID-19, and unrelated injuries and illnesses.

Overall Trends

Although the overall life insurance claim count was only 4% higher than the pre-pandemic average, the gap was not the smallest the SOA team has found since the start of the pandemic.

In the second quarter of 2021, the individual life death claim count total was only 1% higher than the pre-pandemic average but increased to 15% higher than the pre-pandemic average in the following quarter.