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.

View Archived Tables