All about risk
Excerpt:
Executives are hoping that Fed interest rate increases could increase the yields on insurers’ huge investment portfolios.
Higher rates could be a good thing for Prudential, the company’s vice chairman told analysts.
MetLife’s CEO said higher short-term rates could mean a flatter yield curve that would be less favorable to life insurers.
Author(s): Allison Bell
Publication Date: 4 Feb 2022
Publication Site: Think Advisor
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Life insurers had hoped that vaccination campaigns, social distancing efforts and the effects of past COVID-19 infections on people’s immune systems would start to reduce the impact of the pandemic on people with commercial life insurance and other commercial insurance products.
While the fall 2021 surge was underway, information about deaths and life insurance claims emerged slowly. Some life insurers suggested that the fall surge seemed to be spiking hard but ending quickly.
Now, Unum Group, Lincoln Financial, MetLife and other life insurers are saying that the fall surge did cause big increases in the ratio of death benefits to life insurance premiums. At Unum, for example, the ratio increased to 98.3% in the latest quarter, from 71.7% in the fourth quarter of 2019, before the pandemic began.
Author(s): Allison Bell
Publication Date: 7 Feb 2022
Publication Site: Think Advisor
Link:https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2022/02/01/ed-slott-child-tax-credit-is-a-mess/
Excerpt:
The Internal Revenue Service issued Tuesday a revised Fact Sheet and frequently asked questions on the 2021 child tax credit and advance child tax credit to help eligible families properly claim the credit when they prepare and file their 2021 tax return.
Tax expert Ed Slott of Ed Slott & Co. told ThinkAdvisor on Tuesday in an email that the child tax credit situation this year is “a mess! Some people may end up paying a tax pro more than the credit!”
Others, Slott said, “may still pay a tax pro only to end up returning money they already received. Advance payments can always be tricky when it’s time to reconcile.”
Author(s): Melanie Waddell
Publication Date: 1 Feb 2022
Publication Site: Think Advisor
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The consumer price index climbed 7% in 2021, the largest 12-month gain since June 1982, according to Labor Department data released Wednesday. The widely followed inflation gauge rose 0.5% from November, exceeding forecasts.
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, so-called core prices accelerated from a month earlier, rising by a larger-than-forecast 0.6%. The measure jumped 5.5% from a year earlier, the biggest advance since 1991.
The increase in the CPI was led by higher prices for shelter and used vehicles. Food costs also contributed. Energy prices, which were a key driver of inflation through most of 2021, fell last month.
Author(s): Reade Pickert
Publication Date: 12 Jan 2022
Publication Site: Think Advisor
Link:https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2022/01/11/pandemic-spending-slowdown-eased-financial-stress-survey/
Excerpt:
Despite a two-year pandemic, workers overall are more confident in their financial situation than they’ve been since 2014, according to findings in the eighth annual Stress, Finances, and Well-Being report released today by John Hancock Retirement. That said, overall stress still affects 72% of retirement plan participants surveyed, especially women (79%) and those 36 to 50 years old (77%).
Further, 71% responded said they had experienced stress, depression or loneliness during the past year.
Author(s): Ginger Szala
Publication Date: 11 Jan 2022
Publication Site: Think Advisor
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The hospitalization rate for U.S. residents of all ages is about 60% higher than it was during the last hospitalization surge, which lasted from Aug. 10 through Sept. 10.
U.S. COVID-19 patients ages 20 through 59 are doing better than older patients, but they are facing their own, smaller hospitalization surge.
The pandemic put 51,947 people in the 20-59 age group in U.S. hospitals in the week ending Jan. 7.
Author(s): Allison Bell
Publication Date: 12 Jan 2022
Publication Site: Think Advisor
Excerpt:
The latest numbers in the early CDC death data are for the week ending Dec. 25.
The early data figures include information about fewer than one-third of the deaths occurring that week.
Those figures imply that the gap between the number of deaths caused directly by COVID-19 and the number caused by indirect pandemic effects narrowed.
Author(s): Allison Bell
Publication Date: 3 Jan 2022
Publication Site: Think Advisor
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Whatever the omicron variant of COVID-19 does to U.S. life insurance insurance claims, the delta variant and its siblings have been continuing to drive up the number of deaths of working-age Americans.
Some life and health insurers reported that an enormous surge of COVID-19 deaths appeared in September and then seemed to end quickly.
A look at weekly death count data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, from 2015 through 2019, about 12,900 people ages 25 through 64 died, from all causes, in a typical week.
In September, the number climbed more than 7,000, or more than 50%, over the median.
That total includes both people killed directly by COVID-19 and by the effects of the pandemic on the health care system, the economy and U.S. society as a whole.
Author(s): Allison Bell
Publication Date: 3 Jan 2022
Publication Site: Think Advisor
Link:https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/11/30/5-worst-cities-for-covid-19-case-count-trends/
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The latest COVID-19 Community Profile Report, which is produced by public health specialists at the CDC and another federal agency, shows that the overall number of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people fell to 504,056 in the week ending Nov. 28, down 21% from the total for the previous week.
But, at the metropolitan area level, week-over-week changes ranged from a drop of 100% to an increase of 12%.
Author(s): Allison Bell
Publication Date: 30 Nov 2021
Publication Site: Think Advisor
Link:https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/11/26/covid-19-omicron-variant-hits-life-insurers-stock-prices/
Excerpt:
Stock traders today appeared to assume that the omicron variant will hit life insurers harder than health insurers.
The stock prices of Anthem, Centene, Humana and UnitedHealth all dropped from 1.7% to 2.28% — less than the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The stock prices of Ameriprise, Brighthouse Financial, CNO Financial, Equitable, Globe Life, Lincoln Financial, MetLife, Primerica Principal Financial Group, Prudential Financial and Unum Group all fell 3.5% to 5%.
The stock price of Reinsurance Group of America — a company that insures life insurers against spikes in mortality and longevity risk — fell 9.58%.
Author(s): Allison Bell
Publication Date: 26 Nov 2021
Publication Site: Think Advisor
Link: https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/11/08/wave-of-covid-19-deaths-hit-rga-hard/
Excerpt:
After the second quarter, RGA executives told analysts they were optimistic about the effects of COVID-19 vaccination programs on mortality.
Instead, “the third quarter saw increases in both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 general population mortality,” Porter said.
In the United States and India, the typical age of people dying of COVID-19 is falling, Porter added.
That hurts life insurers because people under 65 are more likely than older people to have life insurance.
Author(s): Allison Bell
Publication Date: 8 Nov 2021
Publication Site: Think Advisor
Link:https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/10/15/50-states-of-mortality-spike-data-for-the-25-44-age-group/
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Excerpt:
In the first two weeks ending in September, the number of deaths of U.S. residents in the 25-44 age group spiked to 8,604.
The number of deaths of people in that age group was 22% higher than it was during the comparable period, and 57% higher than it was during the comparable period in 2019 — before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
In the first half of 2021, which included the January spike, the number of deaths of people in the 25-44 age group was 38% higher than in the first half of 2019.
There are about 87.4 million people in the 25-44 age group in the United States, according to the Census Bureau.
Author(s):Allison Bell
Publication Date: 15 Oct 2021
Publication Site: Think Advisor