Life Insurance Buyers Like the Stock Market
Overall sales were flat in the second quarter, but variable and indexed universal life were hot.
U.S. life insurance sales figures show buyers falling back in love with the investment markets in the second quarter.
Issuers reported making $4 billion in individual life sales in the quarter, about the same as in the second quarter of 2023, according to new market survey data from LIMRA.
Variable universal life policies — products that give the policyholders a chance to tie policy value to the performance of subaccounts that resemble mutual funds — attracted more new annualized premiums than any other type of policy included in the quarterly sales data.
The dollar value of VUL sales rose 10% between the second quarter of 2023 and the latest quarter, to $536 million.
What it means: Investors are starting to shake off COVID pandemic-period gloom and move their cash out from under the mattress.
The numbers: LIMRA is an industry-owned organization that bases its quarterly life sales figures on data from issuers that account for 85% of the U.S. life market.
It found that the number of VUL policies sold increased 5%, year over year.
Indexed universal life policies — products that tie policy value to the performance of investment indexes — attracted the most applications.
Buyers paid $913 million for IUL policies in the second quarter, or about what they put into IUL policies in the year-earlier quarter, and the number of IUL policies sold increased 11%.
Here’s a look at second-quarter new annualized premium trends for all types of policies included in the LIMRA data:
- Variable universal life: $536 million (+10%)
- Traditional universal life: $279 million (+5%)
- Term life: $786 million (+2%)
- Indexed universal life: $913 million (+0%)
- Whole life: $1.5 billion (-7%)
- Total: $4.0 billion (+0%)
Wink’s numbers: Wink, an independent life and annuity data firm, also posted second-quarter life issuer sales numbers, based on data from the insurers that participate in its surveys.
Here’s what happened to sales for the individual life products Wink tracked both in the second quarter of 2023 and the latest quarter:
- Indexed universal life and indexed whole life: $747 million (+2.8%)
- Traditional universal life: $100 million (-1%)
- Whole life: $1.1 billion (-1%)
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