Life and annuity sales to continue ‘pretty remarkable growth’ in 2026

Continued economic turmoil is a market concern, but life insurance and annuity sales are expected to remain solid throughout 2026, LIMRA projects.

Bryan Hodgens, senior vice president and head of LIMRA research, and Sean Grindall, chief member relations and solutions officer, hosted a LinkedIn Live event last week to discuss sales projections.

LIMRA is projecting solid growth this year in both life insurance and annuities.

“For the past several years, if you're looking at the U.S. retail life insurance and annuity markets, we’ve seen some pretty remarkable growth,” Hodgens said.

Life insurance new premium set records in three of the past four years, Hodgens noted, and is poised to set a record when the 2025 data is finalized.

Still, LIMRA projects as many as 100 million Americans live with a life insurance coverage gap.

“We've had some great growth that awareness has helped,” Grindall said, “but there's just still so much opportunity in front of us.”

On the annuity side, LIMRA is projecting sales to exceed $450 billion for 2025, which is double the sales of just four years ago. It is expected to be the fourth consecutive year of record annuity sales.

“So, both the life and the annuity have a lot of momentum,” Hodgens said.

Sales keep rolling on

While life insurance products are flying off the shelves, those sales are not taking place in a trouble-free environment. The market is actually quite disrupted with both positive and negative factors.

The economy, for one.

“We've had favorable economic conditions,” Grindall said. “Interest rates have been more elevated than we've seen in a while for several years. We've had a robust equity market that's particularly helped things like index universal life and VUL [variable universal life].”

A stronger job market and some wage growth have helped many Americans find the money for life insurance premiums, he added.

On the other hand, a LIMRA survey of Americans found that 52% say that they're extremely concerned about the economy right now, Hodgens noted. The continued inflation and stubborn unemployment in certain sectors are other areas of concern, he added.

“I think that this plays into our growth projections, and the sentiment certainly plays into where we think consumers are going to be thinking about, particularly in that middle market for insurance,” Hodgens said.

Life product projections

Hodgens and Grindall discussed LIMRA projections for every life insurance category.

LIMRA cooks up forecasts based on household income, inflation, economic conditions, equity markets, interest rates, unemployment, consumer demand, geopolitical risks, the need gap, and past projections of sales by product.

“All of that gets factored into some of these forecasts and these assumptions here,” Hodgens explained.

Term life: Growth will range from 0% to 4%, “constrained by economic activity and rising unemployment.”

Whole life: Expected to grow 1% to 5%, supported by short-pay sales but tempered by a slowing economy and by mutual carriers shifting some focus to universal life.

Fixed universal life: Continues to decline, with premiums expected to fall 3% to 7%.

Indexed universal life: Growth slows from 21% to 25% in 2025, to 8% to 12% as premium financing benefits from lower rates but forces competition from new IUL products.

Variable universal life: After surging nearly 30% in 2025, VUL growth will drop to 1% to 7%, reflecting equity and market volatility and saturation in private placement sales.

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InsuranceNewsNet Senior Editor John Hilton has covered business and other beats in more than 20 years of daily journalism. John may be reached at john.hilton@innfeedback.com. Follow him on Twitter @INNJohnH.