Something's up.
From A.M. Best, March 2022:
For the United States as a whole, and life insurers in particular, 2021 was a year marked by higher mortality as the COVID-19 pandemic entered a third year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported deaths up across many categories, higher even than 2020.
Key Points
- Deaths: The CDC reported more than 3.42 million deaths from all causes in 2021, up from 3.39 in the prior year and far off the 2.85 million in pre-pandemic 2019.
- Causes: While excess mortality tends to rise with COVID-19 numbers, insurers see some level of disconnect and are scratching their heads over whether the excess mortality reflects an undercount of virus-related deaths.
- Underwriting: The increase, which was substantial enough to lower life expectancy in the United States, could bring about future changes in underwriting practices. However, it remains too early to tell what the lasting impacts will be.
Last year proved historically deadly in the United States, as excess mortality continued to climb at the same time many hoped to catch a glimpse of the COVID-19 pandemic's end stages.
The mortality numbers also beg a question that can prove murky at best, especially for the data-driven world of life insurers, one in which quantification is a science of sorts. The open-ended question is whether in a year dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the quest to avoid infections, the official counts are in fact off to some degree, leaving unclear the potential true death count wrought by the illness.
According to preliminary statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 3,422,279 people died in 2021, though the figures could be revised upward as more data comes in from the final weeks of the year. In the year prior, at the height of the pandemic, 3,389,062 people died, both well above the 2,852,349 people the CDC cited for 2019, the last year considered pre-pandemic.
Those figures are for the broader U.S. population rather than among the insured population. Still, the peaked death rates for the two years were enough that the CDC data lowered life expectancy to 77 years in 2020, a decrease of 1.8 years from 2019 figures.
“The third quarter was a rough quarter, extraordinarily rough for certain demographics,” said Tim Bischof, chief actuary at OneAmerica. “The fourth quarter wasn't exactly a reprieve. The fourth quarter was better overall, but it wasn't a whole lot better.”
The mortality trend was so stark that OneAmerica announced deaths in its group life business had risen a full 40% in the 18-64 age group, a trend that began in the second half of 2021 and continued through the remainder. Bischof said longer term, the trend could potentially bring alterations in underwriting or pricing if it doesn't subside. The Indianapolis-based company offers retirement plan products and record-keeping services, individual life insurance, annuities, asset-based long-term care solutions and employee benefit plan products....
Later in the article this bit rather jumps off the page:
....“Excess mortality has down-shifted toward the younger and middle adult ages during 2021, which has a higher intersection with group life mortality,” the SOA [Society of Actuaries] said in an email. “Group life mortality was lower in the start of the pandemic, and it now has higher excess mortality.”....
....MUCH MORE
