Fraternity-Testvériség, 2010 (88. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2010-04-01 / 2. szám
Fraternity I Testvériség Mars and Venus—We Purchase Insurance Differently By Kathy A. Megyeri M y husband prefers real estate investments at the beach; I like the mountains. He likes fix-it-up projects that will gamer a greater return on his investment. I want move- in, turn-key operations. He buys utility stocks, corporate bonds and overseas funds. I prefer stocks with pharmaceutical giants, large retail companies and leisure time entities. He’s the saver and I’m the spender in the family. What’s going on here? Are men and women really different when it comes to purchasing insurance as well? Perhaps a few lessons can be learned from Merrill Lynch’s Investment Manager survey from 2003, the most extensive year of study. It found that women make fewer investment mistakes than men for the following reasons: • Women are far less likely to hold a losing investment too long. • Women are far less likely to wait too long to sell a winning investment. • Of the men who reported buying a stock without doing any research, most did it again; less than half of women repeated the mistake. • Nearly half of all women who waited too long to sell an investment did it again, but most men repeated the mistake. Let’s see if such female savvy holds true in purchasing insurance. Kenneth N. Isenberg and Karen L. Terry, both Product Researchers for LIMRA International, completed the 2003 Life Buyer Study in the U.S. They found that while the demographics of individual life insurance buyers change slowly, several trends have developed over the last 20 years that are worth noting. 1. Just as the population has aged, so have individual buyers. The median age in 2003 was 35 compared to 30 in I983. People are starting families at a later age and buying more life insurance products when they are over 45 years of age. 2. Term insurance is the top product, representing 50% of policies in 2003, up from 26% in 1983. Term products with long level premium periods now dominate the market; the most popular are twenty pay policies. 3. Even though term is the top product, permanent products, including whole life, universal life, and variable universal life, still sell well in some segments of the market. Whole life accounts for most of the policies sold in the senior and juvenile markets. 4. The average size of new policies has increased fourfold over the last 20 years, compared to an 85% increase in the cost of living. This increase in average face value has been driven in part by jumbo policies (those with face amounts over $1 million). These policies account for one-third of face amount and a quarter of new premiums, further evidence of the industry’s shift to more affluent markets. 5. As baby boomers grow older, there has been a shift among buyers to the older age groups. 6. Despite the gains in the older age market, most purchasers are still in younger age groups. The traditional insurance-buying age group of 25-44 is still more likely to purchase insurance because of life events such as marriage and the birth of children. So what gender differences do we see among these statistics? Let’s take a look: Men • Adult men still represent the largest percentage of new policies sold; 44% of policies purchased in 2003 covered adult males, a figure almost unchanged for a decade. (Twenty years ago, they were half of the new policy market. In 2003, sales of juvenile policies accounted for 17%.) • The average coverage purchased by men in 2003 was $300,00. • The premium for a typical policy purchased was $2,000. • 62% of male buyers bought term insurance in 2003. • Most of the buyers using independent agents were older men. • Men buy the majority of recurring premium policies. • Men purchase the largest single premium policies and pay an average of $120,000 for them. Women • The average policy purchased by an adult woman has a face amount of $190,000, only 60% of the average coverage purchased by men.
