New York Life Boosts Dividend for 2024

New York Life on Thursday announced that it expects to pay $2.2 billion in dividends to eligible policyholders in 2024, up from a $2 billion payout in 2023.

Information about the company’s dividend scale, or base rate used for computing dividends, was not immediately available.

The company’s 10.3% payout increase is comparable to what other large mutual insurers have announced so far: MassMutual, Northwestern Mutual and Thrivent are on track to increase their payouts by an average of about 10%.

Guardian, Nassau Financial and Penn Mutual are some of the life insurers with 2024 dividend announcements that will be made in the next few weeks.

What it means: One indicator of what’s happening to investment returns at big, carefully managed, institutional portfolios that have large allocations of assets to high-grade corporate bonds is rising by 10%.

Insurer dividends: Policyholder-owned mutual insurers use dividends to share earnings with their policyholder-owners.

Mutual life insurers are best known for paying dividends on whole life insurance policies, but they may also pay dividends on other types of policies, such as annuities and disability insurance policies.