To determine where residents are most concerned about life insurance, Beca Life ranked them by monthly online searches for terms related to the product, based on data from Google Keyword Planner. The total number of monthly average searches in each state was compared against its population, to determine the average monthly searches per 100,000 people.
The top five states have an average of 852.84 people per 100,000 seeking life insurance via search engine each month.
The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute’s Mortality and Longevity Strategic Research Program Steering Committee issued a call for essays to explore the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to mortality and longevity. The objective was to gather a variety of perspectives and experiences on the use of AI in mortality modeling, forecasting and prediction to promote discussion and future research around this topic.
The collection includes six essays that were accepted for publication from all submissions. Two essays were chosen for prizes based on their creativity, originality, and likelihood of further thought on the subject matter.
Author(s): multiple
Publication Date: September 2024
Publication Site: Society of Actuaries, SOA Research Institute
Four years on from the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, many countries worldwide still report elevated deaths in their populations. This impact appears generally independent of healthcare systems and population health. This trend is evident even after accounting for shifting population sizes, and the range of reporting mechanisms and death classifications that make inter-country comparisons complex. There is also likely a degree of excess mortality under-reporting.
Quantifying excess mortality has been an acute challenge since 2020 due to the exceptional mortality rates of the pandemic. Excess mortality refers to the number of deaths over and above an assumed “expected” number of deaths. The different methods of estimating expected mortality can generate very different excess mortality rates.
This represents a potential challenge for Life and Health (L&H) insurance, with potentially several years of elevated mortality claims ahead, depending on how general population trends translate into the insured population. Ongoing excess mortality can have implications for L&H insurance claims and reserves. Excess mortality that continues to exceed current expectations may affect the long-term performance of in-force life portfolios as well as the pricing of new life policies.
Author(s): By Daniel Meier, Life & Health R&D Manager, CUO L&H Reinsurance & Prachi Patkee, Life & Health R&D Analyst, CUO L&H Reinsurance & Adam Strange, Life & Health R&D Manager, CUO L&H Reinsurance
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, in early 2020, Globe Life has been one of the life insurers that’s been quickest to give analysts candid assessments of U.S. mortality.
Mortality is much lower than it was when pandemic-related mortality was peaking, and mortality trends are now helping, not, hurting, Globe Life’s earnings, Kalmbach said.
“Mortality has been fairly consistent over the last few quarters, which has been good,” he said.
He sees the mortality rate from accidents and other nonmedical causes improving.
….
“Heart disease and cancer, although improved, are still a little bit higher,” he said. “Another one that remains elevated as a cause of death is neurological disorders, which would be stroke and Alzheimer’s. We’re keeping an eye on that.”
Bank loan investments increased to about $122 billion in book/adjusted carrying value (BACV) at year-end 2023 from $117 billion at year-end 2022.
Despite the 4.6% growth, bank loansremained at 1.4% of U.S. insurers’ total cash and invested assets at year-end 2023—the same as year-end 2022.
Approximately 70% of U.S. insurers’ bank loan investments were acquired, and 85% were held by life companies.
In particular, large life companies, or those with more than $10 billion in assets under management, accounted for 82% of U.S. insurers’ bank loan exposure, up from nearly 80% in 2022.
The top 25 insurance companies accounted for 75% of U.S. insurers’ total bank loan investments at year-end 2023; the top 10 accounted for about 60%.
Improvement in credit quality for U.S. insurer-bank loans continued, evidenced by a fourpercentage-point increase in those carrying NAIC 1 and NAIC 2 designations and a corresponding four-percentage-point decrease in bank loans carrying NAIC 3 and NAIC 4 designations.
Author(s): Jennifer Johnson
Publication Date: 16 July 2024
Publication Site: NAIC Capital Markets Special Report
Chris Swift, the chief executive officer of Hartford Financial, on Friday confirmed what government statistics seem to be showing: The U.S. death rate continues to be noticeably higher than it was before early 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic came to light.
Swift talked about the effects of the higher U.S. mortality rate on the company’s group life insurance business Friday during a conference call with securities analysts.
He noted that mortality was much lower in the first quarter than in the first quarter of 2023, but that it was still somewhat higher than the pre-pandemic average.
“The trends are downward,” Swift said. “But we believe that we’re still operating in an endemic state of mortality, which means it’s going to be higher than normal, and we think that will continue for at least the next the next couple of years. We’ve been pricing our product with that view.”
There’s a narrow path to such ostentation for the non-famous and non-college-interested who mock the idea of an actual job. Mize found his muse in the con and his ability to rope others into it. Here’s how they say it happened: He struck when you wanted cash. When totems of the middle class were slipping from reach. When you needed a down payment. To pay off credit cards. To start a business. When asking your parents for money made you feel like a failure. When you were suffocated by medical bills, neither earning enough to pay nor poor enough for government help.
Yet money alone doesn’t completely explain why the people closest to Mize entered the ring. Mize had a way of making himself your center of gravity, the one from whom you wanted approval, mentorship, love. Mize could be fun, even thrilling. But getting all that meant pleasing him. And pleasing him meant fraud.
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of capital and key related terms, as well as to compare and contrast four key regulatory capital regimes. Not only is each regime’s methodology explained with key terms defined and formulas provided, but illustrative applications of each approach are provided via an example with a baseline scenario. Comparison among these capital regimes is also provided using this same model with two alternative scenarios.
The four regulatory required capital approaches discussed in this paper are National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) Risk-Based Capital (RBC; the United States), Life Insurer Capital Adequacy Test (LICAT; Canada), Solvency II (European Union), and the Bermuda Insurance Solvency (BIS) Framework which describes the Bermuda Solvency Capital Requirement (BSCR). These terms may be used interchangeably. These standards apply to a large portion of the global life insurance market and were chosen to give the reader a better understanding of how required capital varies by jurisdiction, and the impact of the measurement method on life insurance company capital.
All of these approaches are similar in that they identify key risks for which capital should be held (e.g., asset default and market risks, insurance risks, etc.). However, they differ in significant ways too, including their defined risk taxonomy and risk diversification / aggregation methodologies, as well as required minimum capital thresholds and corresponding implications. Another key difference is that the US’s RBC methodology is largely factor-based, while the other methodologies are model-based approaches. For the model-based approaches, Solvency II and BIS allow for the use of internal models when certain conditions are satisfied. Another difference is that the RBC methodology is largely derived using book values, while the others use economic-based measurements.
As mentioned above, this paper provides a model that calculates the capital requirements for each jurisdiction. The model is used to compare regulatory solvency capital using identical portfolios for both assets and liabilities. For simplicity, we have assumed that all liabilities originated in the same jurisdiction as the calculation. As the objective of the model is to illustrate required capital calculation methodology differences, a number of modeling simplifications were employed and detailed later in the paper. The model considers two products – term insurance and payout annuities, approximately equally weighted in terms of reserves. The assets consist of two non-callable bonds of differing durations, mortgages, real estate, and equities. Two alternative scenarios have been considered, one where the company invests in riskier assets than assumed in the base case and one where the liability mix is more heavily weighted to annuities as compared to the base case.
Author(s): Ben Leiser, FSA, MAAA; Janine Bender, ASA, MAAA; Brian Kaul
The Term Guy’s hobby is collecting antique insurance books. Here we’ve scanned many of our out of copyright books for your enjoyment and perhaps research purposes. Stay tuned, more books coming as I have time to scan them!
We have extracted table data from many of these books and made the information available as excel spreadsheets. In the download of spreadsheets we have also included a high def image of each of the pages containing the tables. The image filename for each page and the excel spreadsheet have the same name, i.e. image0001.jpg.xlxs contains table data from image0001.jpg. You may download and use the data unrestricted, but we would ask that you consider giving us a link from your website so that others can find this information as well.
Traditionally, many life insurance agents, brokers and advisors have preferred to operate as independent contractors to benefit from the federal income tax rules for self-employed people and to enjoy the privilege of not having a boss.
But some financial professionals have argued that they would be better off if life insurers classified them as employees. In 2009, for example, three former Northwestern Mutual Life representatives sued in a federal court in California over allegations that the company had deprived them of FLSA protections by classifying them as independent contractors.
In 2019, representatives for Uber drivers and other gig workers persuaded California lawmakers to pass Assembly Bill 5, legislation that established a broader definition of “employee” for California employers.
Federal efforts: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners and other agent and broker groups joined with the American Council of Life Insurers to oppose efforts by members of Congress to set a federal definition for employee that would be similar to the California definition.
During the administration of former President Donald Trump, the Labor Department tried to address the concerns about worker classification by adopting a new, shorter “core factors” test. Those regulations took effect in January 2021.
In October 2022, after Joe Biden became president, the department announced in a notice that it was planning to rescind and replace the new regulations because the new regulations were not fully compatible with the FLSA and conflicted with decades of court decisions based on the economic reality test.
As consumers, regulators, and stakeholders demand more transparency and accountability with respect to how insurers’ business practices contribute to potential systemic societal inequities, insurers will need to adapt. One way insurers can do this is by conducting disparate impact analyses and establishing robust systems for monitoring and minimizing disparate impacts. There are several reasons why this is beneficial:
Disparate impact analyses focus on identifying unintentional discrimination resulting in disproportionate impacts on protected classes. This potentially creates a higher standard than evaluating unfairly discriminatory practices depending on one’s interpretation of what constitutes unfair discrimination. Practices that do not result in disparate impacts are likely by default to also not be unfairly discriminatory (assuming that there are also no intentionally discriminatory practices in place and that all unfairly discriminatory variables codified by state statutes are evaluated in the disparate impact analysis).
Disparate impact analyses that align with company values and mission statements reaffirm commitments to ensuring equity in the insurance industry. This provides goodwill to consumers and provides value to stakeholders.
Disparate impact analyses can prevent or mitigate future legal issues. By proactively monitoring and minimizing disparate impacts, companies can reduce the likelihood of allegations of discrimination against a protected class and corresponding litigation.
If writing business in Colorado, then establishing a framework for assessing and monitoring disparate impacts now will allow for a smooth transition once the Colorado bill goes into effect. If disparate impacts are identified, insurers have time to implement corrections before the bill is effective.
