Looking at Where Life Insurance Sales Are Headed

If you are a consumer interested in purchasing life insurance, having some knowledge of the industry and where it may be headed are good ideas.

With your stop at LifeInsuranceQuotes.com, you can learn about the ins and outs of purchasing a life insurance policy and what you need to look for before, during and after the process.

Recent numbers from a LIMRA report in late 2010 indicate that 59 percent of insurance executives feel overall individual life insurance sales will stay stagnant, while 68 percent believe group life sales will stall this year. The survey involved 70 industry leaders.

According to a LIMRA spokesperson, typically speaking, major growth in life insurance sales is driven by new products in the market. Even though overall sales might not see substantial increases this year, LIMRA feels that some products will garner attention in this low-interest environment.

According to a third of executives, indexed insurance products will have the highest growth possibilities this year. They note that the resolution of 151A, along with small interest rates, make indexed life insurance more appealing to producers and has a larger number of carriers coming to market.

Whole life insurance was close behind, gathering 27 percent of executives backing it to increase the most this year. Universal life and term life each gathered approximately a fifth of the votes.

The survey notes that most of the executives believe there will be an increase in sales to the middle market leading to a jump in policy count, which was seen in Q3 2010.

Given the number of U.S. households that are uninsured or underinsured at a 50-year record high, more insurers are going after this market, which could in fact increase the sales numbers.

The executives feel traditional distribution will keep on struggling this year. More than three-quarters of executives believe that the sales force will decline this year.

Following a pair of years with additional recruiting (2007 and 2008) recruiting dropped in 2009, along with the first half of last year.

LIMRA research adds that only 73 companies recruit at all (drop from the 220 companies that recruited two decades ago); and five businesses account for approximately 65 percent of the new hires.