Indexed Life Sales Continue to Rise

A percentage sign

Indexed life insurance policies continued to sell well in the fourth quarter, as sales of two other types of non-variable cash value life insurance dropped.

Wink — a Des Moines, Iowa-based life and annuity market monitoring firm — published on Tuesday a  new insurer survey report exploring U.S. individual life insurance sales trends.

What It Means

Clients seem to prefer products that will do better as interest rates rise.

The Details

The Wink survey covers non-variable, permanent life products. It does not include term life insurance, which has no built-in cash value, or variable universal life.

The firm received market data from 49 indexed life issuers, 72 whole life issuers and 58 fixed universal life issuers.

Here’s how the fourth quarter numbers for 2022 compared to the fourth quarter of 2021:

Indexed life: $752 million (+4.7%)
Whole life: $1.2 billion (-17.6%)
Fixed universal life: $110 million (-21.7%)

Overall sales of the three types of products Wink tracks fell 13%, year-over-year, to $2.1 billion.

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