{"id":328,"date":"2020-05-21T17:39:56","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T17:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/?p=328"},"modified":"2025-05-06T09:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T09:20:09","slug":"can-life-insurers-cover-all-covid-19-death-claims-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/2020\/05\/21\/can-life-insurers-cover-all-covid-19-death-claims-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Life Insurers Cover All COVID-19 Death Claims?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Coronavirus\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Will life  insurers be able
\nto  pay all the death claims attributable
\nto COVID-19 that come on top of claims for deaths not directly related to the
\npandemic? <\/p>\n

Triple-I chief economist Dr. Steven
\nWeisbart<\/a> says they can.<\/p>\n

How many additional death claims will COVID-19 cause? <\/strong><\/p>\n

As of this writing, officially about 90,000 Americans have died
\nfrom COVID-19. In addition, there have been other deaths that seem excessive
\nrelative to \u201cnormal\u201d statistics in prior years, suggesting the COVID-19 numbers
\nare an undercount. It\u2019s also
\npossible<\/a> that the \u201clockdown\u201d imposed nearly nationally in late March,
\nApril, and in part of May, added to the total through suicide, drug overdoses,
\nuntreated conditions that would have been treated and managed in the absence of
\nthe pandemic, and violence. <\/p>\n

So,
\nlet\u2019s assume that, for the full year 2020, COVID-19 and related stresses cause
\n300,000 additional deaths. For simplicity, we\u2019ll ignore any lockdown-related reductions
\nin deaths \u2013 from, for example, fewer traffic accidents, air pollution, and
\nother causes \u2013 that might be attributed to the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
Dr. Steven Weisbart
\nTriple-I Chief Economist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s
\nunlikely that all the people who\u2019ve died from COVID-19 had individual life
\ninsurance, since many were age 60 or over,\u201d Weisbart says. \u201cEven if we assume a
\nthird of these were insured \u2013 and, further, that two-thirds of younger people
\nwho died also had life insurance \u2013 and that all these claims were in addition
\nto other causes of death, that would be 150,000 claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2018, the latest year for which we have data, beneficiaries
\nunder 2.7 million individual life insurance policies received death benefits.
\nSo, although 150,000 additional death claims represent a large human toll, they
\nwould be only a 5.6 percent increase over the 2.7 million baseline. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

\u201cThat would result in total death benefits being paid to 2.85
\nmillion beneficiaries,\u201d Weisbart says. \u201cThis is roughly the same as occurred in
\n2015 and well below the peak of 3.5 million in 2012.\u201d <\/p>\n

In other words, even with our conservative assumptions, paying the
\nadditional deaths claims due to the pandemic is well within the industry\u2019s financial
\nand operational ability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will life  insurers be able to  pay all the death claims attributable to COVID-19 that come on top<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cdellis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}