{"id":18393,"date":"2020-05-15T01:11:35","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T05:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/Life-Insurance-Blog\/life-insurers-close-some-doors-amid-coronavirus-pandemic\/"},"modified":"2020-05-15T01:11:35","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T05:11:35","slug":"life-insurers-close-some-doors-amid-coronavirus-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/2020\/05\/15\/life-insurers-close-some-doors-amid-coronavirus-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Life insurers close some doors amid coronavirus pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A grey picture of the life-insurance industry is developing south of the border as some U.S. carriers start to introduce restrictions to their offerings<\/a> in the face of challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

According to the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, numerous Americans looking for life insurance coverage amid the outbreak are being turned away as certain insurers suspend sales of popular products, hike premiums, or scale back coverage and benefits.<\/p>\n

Numerous firms, including Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co., have temporarily stopped selling life insurance to people 70 and older with poor health. Insurance-industry leaders have cited analyses showing older people with underlying medical problems have much higher mortality rates from the novel coronavirus compared to younger ones.<\/p>\n

Citing a memo Penn Mutual issued to brokers in March, the Journal <\/em>said the insurer expects \u201cto revisit these and other changes as we gain better insight into the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prudential, the largest life insurer in the U.S. by assets, has suspended sales of 30-year term-life policies, and reduced the interest it credits to certain universal life policies that combine savings and death benefits.<\/p>\n

A raft of insurers \u2013 including AIG, Nationwide Mutual Insurance, Pacific Life Insurance, and Principal Financial Group \u2013 have also restricted the size of their guaranteed universal-life policies.<\/p>\n

The COVID-19 outbreak has presented numerous challenges to insurers<\/a>, with the widespread plunge in interest rates being the main impetus behind the changes in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Given anemic yields in the bond markets, insurers have been struggling to gain enough returns from their investment portfolios to honour claims and still turn a profit. The majority of a life insurer\u2019s general investment account is typically held in long-term bonds whose yields follow the 10-year U.S. Treasury, which has been mostly seeing its annual yield decline since its peak of nearly 16% in the 1980s, according to the Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The yield dove in the aftermath of the 2008-09 financial crisis, going as low as 1.366% in 2016 before recovering to roughly 3% in 2018. A coronavirus-driven rush to safer assets coupled with concerns on central-bank rate cuts caused yields to plunge anew.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Insurers] see no end in sight and they are all rushing to react to that,\u201d Mark Chandik, president of FDP Wealth Management, told the Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Read the original article at https:\/\/www.lifehealthpro.ca\/rss\/ <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A grey picture of the life-insurance industry is developing south of the border as some U.S. carriers start to introduce restrictions to their offerings in the face of challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic. According...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}