Women May Hate Life Underwriting Exams More Than Men Do

Legal & General America has found some evidence that streamlining the life insurance underwriting process could help increase the odds that women will buy life insurance.

The life insurer uncovered that nuggent recently when it organized a survey about the life insurance purchasing process for a report on the future of life insurance in the United States.

The insurer has focused on developing quick, simplified life insurance sales processes that minimize use of medical underwriting exams.

The insurer discovered that the biggest difference between the men and women in the survey sample had to with attitudes toward medical underwriting exams.

The sample included about 1,000 men and 1,000 women.

Both the men and the women in the sample rated four of the five life insurance purchasing process factors as having about the same level of importance.

The biggest disagreement had to do with simplified underwriting processes that eliminated physical exams: Only 68% of the men surveyed put lack of medical exams on their life insurance purchasing wish list, compared with 75% of the women.

Other industry surveys have also found a small but noticeable gap between how men and women think of underwriting exams. In 2021, for example, LIMRA asked consumers about their thoughts about simplified underwriting in a survey focusing on the influence of underwriting knowledge on life insurance purchase intent. About 55% of the women who took the survey and 52% of the men said they were more likely to buy life insurance through a simplified underwriting process.