Excess mortality part 2: What is up with the massive increase in life insurance payouts in Q3-4 2021?
Life insurance is a big business. Filled with brilliant mathematical brains (actuaries) that spend their entire careers analyzing death risk. Their job is to attribute a risk score to any individual purchasing life insurance, and ensure that the insurance company “covers the spread” before they have to pay-out on that policy in case of a death. It is designed to make the insurance company money, not to lose money. This is literally a science, actuarial science to be exact. They can track data and numbers with precise accuracy year in and year out. They are usually on the money with their predictions.
Until 2021.
So what in the HECK happened in the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2021? This story broke in early January 2022. OneAmerica, an insurance company in Indiana, released data that their life insurance payouts due to in the second half of 2021 were 40% HIGHER than pre-pandemic payouts. What is most interesting about this company is that they provide group life insurance to businesses. As in, when you go work for a company and they review your benefits package, such as medical and vision and dental insurance, companies like OneAmerica offer life insurance for employer benefit compensation packages. These are notoriously low risk policies for these companies, and given the frequency of job changes in corporate America, they end up keeping the premiums and the policy is terminated when the employee leaves for a new job. Easy money! Until 2021. Andddddd……those were not deaths due to covid. These deaths are working age individuals, age 18-64, employed full time with the companies they offer benefits for. To put this into more perspective, they determined that a 10% increase in deaths would be considered a “once every 200 years” event. A 40% increase in working employees deaths? Unprecedented and statistically totally anomalous. Not only are death benefits being paid out at an astronomical rate, but so are short and long term disability claims. OneAmerica paid out $100 million dollars for these combined claims. https://www.thecentersquare.com/indiana/indiana-life-insurance-ceo-says-deaths-are-up-40-among-people-ages-18-64/article_71473b12-6b1e-11ec-8641-5b2c06725e2c.html The result of this is life insurance companies are selling off their “life paper” and opting for more stable investing opportunities. Those that are still in the life insurance game are increasing premiums at rates of 20% or more to compensate for the payouts of Q3-4 2021. As in, those of us still alive are paying the increased premiums now. Ageas Federal Life Insurance reported in India, there was a 200-300% increase in claims in 2021, and warned that this was not a “self sustaining payout level” for life insurance to remain profitable and in business. A German based Life and Annuity company reported a 68% increase in life insurance and disability payouts in Q3-4 2021. This excess death payout is happening globally.
In other life insurance “tidbits of interest”, in September 2019, it was announced that life insurance companies were going to a new “CSO mortality table” that was effective January 1, 2020. Just a few months before the “pandemic” arrived. Hmmm. They went on to discuss that life insurance policies purchased after December 31, 2019, would have “substantially higher premiums” and advised buying life insurance in 2019 before the new standard took place. https://www.rcmd.com/resources/blog/new-cso-mortality-standard-will-spur-increases-life-insurance-premiums
This begs the questions. What caused the astronomical and unprescedented statistically anomalous death increase in Q3-4 2021? Covid had already been with us for 18-20 months at that point, and in 2020 we had zero vaccines to prevent covid, so why was late 2021 the HIGHEST mortality rate? Mortality began increasing around the same time vaccines started in early 2021. Millions of people were forced to vaccinate to keep their jobs, along with millions of people were boostered with a 3rd vaccine in Q3-4 2021. The insurance companies already stated it was not increased mortality due to covid, it was other causes. In our traditionally healthy, low risk, full time employed working sector age of the population. These are questions that are heavily speculated about regarding cause, and when the answers come out in the wash the reasons may be stunning. “What killed the working class in America in 2021” may be a future headline we see.