A Life of Interest: Bringing Life to Life Insurance

Some life insurance companies reported increasing consumer demand at the start of the pandemic. “We are expecting that March [2020] could be our best month ever for both applications and policy sales,” said Mark Sayre, head of risk solutions at Haven Life. Estate planning and life insurance startup Fabric shared a similar notion, reporting 50 percent more applications than the norm since February. And the same goes for Policygenius, which saw a strong uptick in consumers inquiring about life insurance during a pandemic.

Despite these promising early signs, in 2020, the industry recorded $186.16 billion in total life premiums written in the U.S., a 0.8 percent decrease from the previous year. Individual life premiums dropped 0.7 percent year over year to $146.99 billion, while group life premiums fell 1.4 percent to $39.17 billion.

At Coverager, we believe that the key theme for life insurers today needs to be around generating interest and stronger interest (which will create a sense of urgency) in different ways. In this report, we will highlight the issues that life insurers confront, deconstruct select and existing models, and present a number of concepts and ideas related to our theme.