Excerpt:
USAA — a policyholder-owned insurer that has historically focused on serving military veterans and their relatives — may be the big U.S. life insurer with the lowest policy lapse rate.
A team of researchers led by Ralph S.J. Koijen has presented data supporting that conclusion in a new analysis of how economic slumps affect which insureds drop their life insurance.
To conduct that analysis, the Koijen team crunched data from the public financial reports of the 30 biggest U.S. life insurer groups, for a period from 1996 through 2020.
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Overall, a severe crisis, such as the 2007-2009 Great Recession, might increase a company’s life policy lapse rate by about 1 percentage point or more, after holding other factors considered equal, the researchers concluded.
The researchers found that, after holding factors such as risk class, smoking use and type of coverage equal, being under age 35 increased the risk of letting a life policy lapse by 46%, and being ages 25 through 34 during an economic slump increase lapse risk by an additional 15%.
Author(s): Allison Bell
Publication Date: 13 July 2022
Publication Site: Think Advisor