Benefits and Claims

Key Facts

  • Life insurance benefits and claims in 2023 totaled $831.9 billion, including life insurance death benefits, annuity benefits, disability benefits and other payouts, up from $812.5 billion in 2022.
  • The largest 2023 payout category was surrender benefits and early terminations or cash withdrawals from life insurance contracts for $416.2 billion.

Life Insurance Industry Benefits and Claims, 2019-2023

($000)

  2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
Death benefits  $78,350,496 $90,433,433 $100,198,058 $91,674,355 $89,001,219
Matured endowments, excluding annual pure endowments 445,591 497,040 528,475 606,576 514,691
Annuity benefits 85,421,529 88,848,211 95,110,207 92,884,072 101,303,264
Disability, accident and health benefits (1) 139,431,703 135,526,217 144,920,228 140,042,066 154,067,258
Coupons, pure endowment and similar benefits  4,327 4,297 5,828 3,489 3,736
Surrender benefits, withdrawals for life contracts  344,522,943 327,921,729 367,482,764 353,038,354 416,238,109
Group conversions 25,499 13,980 17,348 15,771 28,648
Interest and adjustments on deposit type contracts  10,455,887 10,236,865 9,286,939 12,799,475 18,517,180
Payments on supplementary contracts with life contingencies  2,709,843 2,710,766 2,584,854 2,596,714 2,821,214
Increase in aggregate reserve  112,692,702 100,110,444 80,017,664 118,849,532 49,370,649
Total benefits and claims $774,060,520 $756,302,980 $800,152,364 $812,510,404 $831,865,966

(1) Excludes benefits paid by health insurance companies and property/casualty insurance companies.

Source: NAIC data, sourced from S&P Global Market Intelligence, Insurance Information Institute.

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