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Life Health > Life Insurance > Permanent Life Insurance

Individual Permanent Life Sales Cooled in Q4: Wink

By Allison Bell

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What You Need to Know

  • Fixed universal life sales were terrible.
  • Whole life sales were weak.
  • Indexed life sales were meh.

Wink Inc. says fixed universal life, indexed life and whole life sales sales fell to about $1.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, down from about $2.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Low interest rates and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to weigh on sales of permanent life products, despite results from other surveys suggesting that the pandemic has increased consumer interest in life insurance.

The Des Moines, Iowa-based company bases its numbers on results from a voluntary issuer survey.

The Wink indexed life data reflects sales of some indexed whole life policies as well as sales of indexed universal life policies.

Here’s how the Wink life numbers looked in the third quarter, and how those numbers have changed since the first quarter of 2020:

  • Indexed Life: $621 million (down 14%)
  • Whole Life: $1 billion (down 29%)
  • Fixed Universal Life: $119 million (down 66%)

Sheryl Moore, president of Wink, said a combination of low rates and changes in reserving requirements for universal life guarantees have hurt fixed universal life sales.

Whole life may benefit from consumer demand for guarantees, Moore said.

(Image: Bram Janssens/Thinkstock)

Allison Bell

Think_Allison

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