For the third consecutive year, U.S. life insurance new annualized premium set a new sales record. LIMRA reported that 2023 annualized premium increased 1% to $15.7 million. The data comes from the LIMRA U.S. Life Insurance Sales Survey which represents responses from 85% of the total market.
LIMRA/LOMA Senior Vice President and Head of Life & Annuities, John Carroll stated, “The pandemic spurred carriers to accelerate their digitalization actions, transforming the process of buying life insurance and improving the customer experience. This investment, coupled with a strong economy and high consumer interest, have certainly contributed to the sales growth in 2023. LIMRA is forecasting life insurance sales to normalize over the next few years, growing as much as 5% in 2024 and 2025.”
Q4 2023 saw total life insurance premium rise 4% to $4.2 billion. The number of policies sold increased due largely to indexed universal life and term policy sales. Indexed universal life’s fourth quarter results in 2023 was $1.05 billion; which was 4% higher than in Q4 2022. The number of universal life policies sold increased 12% year over year. Term life new premium rose 6th in Q4 to $745 million, which was 5% higher than Q4 2022. In 2023, term premium reached almost $3 billion, 5% greater than 2022 results.
Variable universal life sales, which contributed the most to 2023 Q4 overall results, achieved an 11% increase in new premium sales in Q4 2023 to $536 million, which was generated by a small group of carriers. The number of policies increased by 9% in Q4 over 2022 Q4 results. Fixed universal life new premium also increased in Q4 2023 by 9% over the same period in 2022, achieving sales of $266 million, however, the number of policies sold decreased by 3%.
Whole life insurance did not perform as well as the other insurance types. New whole life premium fell 1% in Q4 2023 to $1.6 billion, and the number policies also decreased by 3%.
The entire report can be found on the LIMRA website (www.limra.com).
