Life Insurance Buyers Like the Stock 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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