Life insurers pay record death benefits in 2021

Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech
·2 min read

Story at a glance

  • Trade association the American Council of Life Insurers recently released its 2022 ACLI Life Insurers Fact Book.

  • In the fact book, the group found life insurance companies paid $100 billion to the beneficiaries of policyholders who died in 2021.

  • That number is the highest amount life insurance companies have paid out to policyholder beneficiaries in a single year.

Correction: This story was updated to reflect the correct number of people who have died in the U.S. during the pandemic.

Life insurance payouts reached a new high in 2021, according to a leading trade association.

New data released by the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) shows companies paid $100 billion to the beneficiaries of policyholders who died last year.

That number is the highest amount life insurance companies have paid out to policyholder beneficiaries in a single year, according to a release from the ACLI.

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While the ACLI data does not show policyholder cause of death, Vice President and Chief Economist at ACLI Andrew Melnyk said COVID-19 is most likely a driving force behind the spike in payouts for the second year in a row.

And that spike is driven by two reasons: the disease’s presence resulting in more Americans purchasing life insurance and the sheer number of people who have died as a result of being infected with the virus.

Life insurance payments have gone up since 2019, according to ACLI data. The number of life insurance policies bought last year was about 6 percent higher than in 2020 with about 46 million policies purchased in 2021.

That bump has pushed the total amount of life insurance coverage in the United States to $21.2 trillion, according to Melnyk.

“In uncertain times, people look for sources of stability and peace of mind,” Melnyk said.

More than 1.075 million people in the U.S. have died as a result of contracting COVID-19 since the pandemic began in 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And while vaccination rates against the virus have gone up, there are still more than 2,000 Americans dying per week from COVID-19, according to the agency.

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