In several recent posts, we’ve written about opportunities agents have to increase their life insurance sales. Here are a couple:
In these articles, we’ve explained that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many people to re-evaluate their insurance needs, including the need for life insurance.
Not surprisingly, supporting evidence is surfacing. According to Insurance News Net, life insurance sales have risen sharply in the first half of 2021. In the second quarter, “life insurance application activity ended up 4.3% over Q2 2020.” This represents “the eighth consecutive quarter with year-over-year quarterly gains and the highest Q2 YOY growth on record.”
LIMRA, the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association, agrees with this assessment. A May 27 LIMRA article reports that “individual life insurance policy sales increased 11% in the first quarter, compared with first quarter 2020. This is the highest growth in the number of policies sold in a quarter since 1983.” Nine of the top 10 life insurance companies “reported increases in new annualized premium in the first three months of 2021.”
While sales of all types of life insurance policies were up, “Whole life and term product sales drove the remarkable first quarter growth, making up 88% of the policies sold in the first quarter.” This is likely due to the fact that these products are fairly “straight-forward” and “easy-to-understand,” according to the article – a big plus for consumers who were purchasing coverage in a virtual environment.
So how long will this increased interest in life insurance last? That, of course, is anyone’s guess, but it’s easy to predict that interest will likely wane as the pandemic lessens. As ThinkAdvisor points out, the “COVID-19 outbreak spurred a significant boost in life insurance activity,” primarily because fear is a prime factor in life insurance sales, so we should expect sales to likely decline once things return to normal.
Still, that decline may not be instant. David Levenson, president and CEO of LIMRA, told Investopedia that their forecast is bullish: “We expect this growth to continue through 2021 based on both life insurance applications—perhaps the best leading indicator of future sales—and increased consumer demand that history tells us will likely persist for at least several years following the pandemic.”
Our advice to AHCP agents? Strike while the iron is hot. Consumers seem to be recognizing the need for life insurance, so now is a great time to talk with them about our options. To learn more about the life insurance products AHCP can help you with, please visit the Carriers Page of our website. And check out our new non-medically underwritten term life insurance designed to be sold over the phone with a policy issued in 15 minutes.