According to some of the more recent pools numbers of life insurance policy holders have gone down by over a 10% since 2004. At first glance this may seem odd but life insurance has lost its spot as one of the priorities in Americans lives. The consequences of this may not be relevant to some, but how often do we think about wealth fare of those we live with?
If we look just at the numbers published by LIMRA for this year, less than a half US citizens aged between 25 and 65 have some form of life policy. The truth is, almost 45% of those who don’t have insurance say they need it, 30 % of those believe they might be able to buy it within next year and over 70% mentioned that costs of living are the main reason for not having life insurance policy. Another interesting fact is that more than 2/3 of Americans with life insurance believe they need better policies but also said those are way too expensive – main reasons for not having better insurance with more than half of those were expenses on internet, cable or mobile phone bills.
Back to the main question, with the mentioned trends, are insurance companies doing something to make life policies more affordable? Not exactly, instead of trying to come with more affordable products that could attract new clients or at least give some extensions for those who believe they need more from their insurance, companies hasn’t done anything to promote their existing products. If the prices of policies aretoo high for the most of potentially new clients, shouldn’t there be some sort of products that could fit those pockets? It seems that insurance companies are quite satisfied with what they have from those that must buy life products because of their need to cover for mortgage on their homes. At least some blame must be on insurance companies for the drop in the number of new life policies.
Potential new buyers of life insurance products all said they need a policy because they care about their loved ones. If you talked to men who have children, all would tell you that they would like to buy a product but they consider the price to be a bit high. If we think about our monthly expenses it certainly seems that our parents didn’t have to pay for internet or cable TV and mobile phones. Can those be the only reasons for not having at least some sort of insurance? The fact is, life insurance isn’t obligatory like car insurance for example, so most of us don’t consider it as something we really need or must have. Another interesting thing that October pool results published by State Farm show us is that over 50% of Americans feel comfortable discussing drug or alcohol issues with their children but only less than 40% would talk to their kids about life insurance policy.
The truth is, less than 50% of US citizens have a life insurance, there are obviously more people who have awareness about consequences their premature death would have on their families and loved ones, but is there someone who cares? I guess we’ll have to rethink our priorities soon.
