The life insurance industry paid out more than $100-billion-dollars to beneficiaries last year.
There have been more than a million Covid deaths in the U.S., which has likely shown up in the amount paid out by the life insurance industry.
“The increase last year, from 2020 to 2021, was 10.8%. That’s not a record, but that is among the highest percentage increases in over 100 years,” says Andrew Melnyk, VP and Chief economist for the American Council of Life Insurers. Approximately 100 years ago, in 1918, the Spanish Flu swept across the country, taking more than 650,000 lives in the U.S., more than 21 million globally. Melnyk says it is likely Covid fatalities spurred the increases in the past two years, though the industry does not keep the data on cause of those deaths. There was a 15% jump in 2020, when the pandemic began.
Covid may have people considering their own mortality.
The ACLI report finds almost 46 million policies were purchased last year.
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