U.S. unexplained deaths continue to rise even after the plandemic has largely subsided, and life insurance companies are feeling the consequences. In 2021, Life insurers paid out a record number of claims, which has cut into its profits significantly.
Josh Stirling, founder of the Insurance Collaboration to Save Lives, said of the trend, “There’s no standard way to measure excess mortality. But if you use the data that seems most reliable it looks like, generally, we’re at 13.9 deaths per 100,000, which is up perhaps 7% from where it should have been. Is that catastrophic? Maybe not, but it should be lower.”
‘Excess mortality’ continuing surge causes concerns – insurancenewsnet.com
Excerpt:
Life insurers paid record levels of claims in 2021 as the pandemic drove mortality higher and the issue was widely cited in earnings reports as the drag on profits. In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, the industry distributed a record $100.28 billion in total death benefits, according to BestLink. The higher-than-normal payouts began in 2020, the first year of the pandemic when insurers saw death benefits rise 15.4% , the biggest one-year increase since the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. The 2021 increase was 10.8%, but fell during the first nine months of 2022, from $74.27 billion in the same period in 2021. But that’s still higher than the $59.18 billion paid out during the same period in 2019 before the pandemic hit, according to BestLink.