Term Life Insurance Index: Online sellers drive term life growth in the second quarter

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Term life insurance kept growing through mid-2026, and online sellers accounted for most of that growth.

Term life’s new premium totaled $824 million in the second quarter of 2026, a 6% increase over the same period in 2025, according to LIMRA, an organization specializing in research, consulting and professional development for the insurance and financial services industries.

New premium is the yearly income insurers expect from the policies they sold during the quarter, counted as if every customer paid once a year.

Insurers sold 5% more term policies than they did a year earlier, and at least half of the carriers LIMRA surveys reported a higher term premium. Term life insurance made up 17% of all individual life insurance sold in the quarter.

Across every type of life insurance, premiums rose 3% to $4.75 billion and the number of policies sold jumped 8%. Bryan Hodgens, head of research at LIMRA, called that jump in policies “a clear signal that more American families are taking steps” to protect themselves financially.

In other segments:

• Whole life. New premiums reached $1.77 billion, up 9% and the biggest single contributor to the market’s growth. Policy count rose 10%, the strongest of any product line, and whole life held 37% of the market.
• Indexed universal life. New premiums came in at $1.1 billion, down 9% and the first decline since 2023. Insurers still sold 6% more IUL policies, and the line held 24% of the market.
• Variable universal life. New premiums totaled $811 million, up 13%, the fastest growth of any product line. Policy count was flat, and VUL held 17% of the market.
• Fixed universal life. New premiums fell 3% to $233 million, a seventh consecutive quarterly decline, with 5% of the market. The only part of the line that grew was policies pairing life insurance with long-term care coverage.

What’s driving term life’s growth?

Online distributors and digital applications delivered the largest term gains of the quarter, according to LIMRA, which pointed to buyers responding to faster and simpler ways to get covered.

Not only do online applications provide coverage quickly — sometimes in as little as a day — but they also don’t require a medical exam and still provide comparable coverage. Many carriers now check your prescription history, driving record and medical records instead of sending you for a blood draw, which shortens the application process significantly.

Many of these insurers continue to try to keep their pricing competitive.. Pulling quotes from three or four companies takes an afternoon, and the same coverage at the same health rating can differ by hundreds of dollars a year depending on which insurer you apply to.

Why LIMRA changed how it counts life insurance sales

LIMRA started using a new measure of life insurance sales at the beginning of 2026, so the figures in this quarter’s report are built slightly differently than the ones published through 2025.

A life insurance policy can take in money three ways. There’s the regular payment the policyholder commits to, there’s a single lump sum that funds some policies outright, and on certain policies there’s extra money the owner chooses to pay on top of the required amount.

The old measure counted the regular payments and a slice of the lump sums. The new one, called annualized with excess premium, adds a slice of that extra money too.

Term life has no room for extra payments. You pay a set amount for a set number of years, so the change adds nothing to term’s totals while it does add to the universal life lines, where overfunding a policy to build cash value is a common strategy.

Nupur Gambhir

Managing Editor

 

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Nupur Gambhir is the editor-in-chief of Insure.com and a licensed life, health and disability insurance agent in New York with seven years of experience covering insurance. Her expertise has been featured in Bloomberg News, Forbes Advisor, CNET, Fortune, Slate, Real Simple, Lifehacker, The Balance, The Financial Gym and MSN. She holds a BA in Economics from The Ohio State University.

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