Monday, August 22, 2011

Life sales up?

The Medical Information Bureau (MIB) is often the frontlines when it comes to life insurance underwriting. Typically, participating carriers turn to the clearinghouse to check up on new applicants. So this little tidbit may be more significant than might be apparent:

"U.S. life insurers researched more requests for individual coverage in July than they did in July 2010."

As we noted a few weeks ago, sales of Long Term Care insurance are on the rise; and so, it would appear, is the sale of life insurance. This shouldn't be surprising, really: with an uncertain economy, very few (if any) risk management vehicles beat life insurance for creating certainty.

I found this little nugget particularly toothsome:

"(G)rowth in activity for older applicants [age 60 and up] has been strong."

Whether this is for estate planning purposes, or because investment values have declined so sharply of late (increasing the need for estate creation), who can say? But the MIB says that "activity" in this cohort is up over 9% from just a year ago. Food for thought.
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