Massachusetts-based, MIB Group, Inc. has released its second annual At-The-Half, long term trends report September 2, showing that life insurance application activity in the United States enjoyed a strong first half in 2021, with year-to-date application activity results increasing 7.3 per cent through the end of June in 2021.
“When we look back and compare to prior years, we continue to see strong numbers with applications in the first six months of 2021 surpassing 2019 by 8.7 per cent and 2018 by 6.4 per cent,” says MIB’s chief operating officer, Andrea Caruso.
After reviewing life applications reported to MIB over the last 10 years, their analysis reveals a slight downward trend in new applications, beginning in 2012 with a brief period of recovery in 2016, followed by continuing declines through 2019 and 2020. After that, however, she says beginning in 2020 MIB has detected a recovery in long-term application activity. “As of June 2021, activity is now within 1.2 per cent of the 10-year average,” she says.
Year-over-year, by quarter, meanwhile, application activity picked up to grow four per cent or better, starting in the third quarter of 2020, spiking at 10 per cent growth in the first quarter of 2021, relative to the same period in 2020.
Caruso adds that based on information provided by its members, MIB has determined that the largest percentage of applications requested have historically been for term life products with whole life coming in second, followed by universal life products.
Year-to-date, MIB says all product lines grew through June, compared to the same period in 2020. “When looking at growth trends however, universal and whole life have been trending up over the last three years while term life has continued to grow, but at a much lower rate. Most recently, we’ve seen a shift to year-over-year declines for term life products during all three months of Q2, 2021.”
