Insurers can use it to price products (but not reserve them unless or until Principle Based Reserves become the standard) so long as they can prove that they have a sufficient amount of experience with the product-this is generally defined as a few years experience in issuing the product. Not to worry–allow me to bring up another point that should render both statistics utterly useless.Ĭlaims experience on any product is proprietary information.
I can’t disclose his identity as this sort of information teeters on the proprietary ledge that they get really nervous about. This information was given to me a few years ago by an actuary. If you want my direct source for the whole life payout rate, I’m sorry to say I’m going to seriously disappoint you.
I would argue, however, that there’s a lot more to these statistics and note that neither one is all that useful and should ultimately be ignored forever.Īnother question that is reasonable to ask here is where this information comes from. small probability of payout, you should opt for something else). Like any statistic this one can be used for bad or good.Īnd there are those who will definitely highlight this stat to suggest pretty much the exact same thing life insurance salesman are doing when they quote the well-known 1% term statistic (i.e. Still, a broad percentage at least offers some insight into the fairness behind the juxtaposition of term life insurance to whole life insurance, so simply knowing the percentage of policies that wind up paying a claim is useful, and that answer is somewhere between 15 and 20% for whole life insurance. This variance of product design will create changes in the length of time any one company actually wants the product to remain in force relative to another and this fact can influence policy lapses. The big takeaway is simply that companies design permanent life insurance products differently. There is some very complex actuarial minutia that would be required to adequately dive into this topic, but since that requires a whole lot of technical discussion, we’ll skip it. So what’s the answer? A lot lower than you might imagine.įirst let me tell you that the percentage of whole life policies that pay a claim is a little tricky to land on.
This statistic isn’t widely quoted by life insurance agents, and I’ll propose a theory later on that might shock a few people. What percentage of whole life insurance policies pay a claim? So much time is spent focusing on the slim odds of a death benefit payout probability that most people forget to ask the naturally obvious follow up question: No manipulation in that statement at all (can you feel me rolling my eyes?).
In fact, the old follow-up point to presenting this statistic to a prospect was to note somewhat glibly, “of course it’s so cheap, when you design a product to almost never work you can pretty much give it away.” Sounds like a waste of money to pay all those premiums to an insurance company knowing there’s a 99% probability that your policy will expire before you do…right? And one of the most commonly used statistics to build the case for owning permanent life insurance over term life insurance is the fact that less than 1% of term life insurance policies ever pay a claim. If you spend anytime around a traditional life insurance agent/broker discussing which type of life insurance you should own, then you’ve undoubtedly been told to opt for whole (or universal) life over term life insurance.
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