US life insurance sales powered into 2026 with little sign of fatigue, as new annualized premium plus excess climbed 10% year over year to $4.5 billion in the first quarter, fresh figures from LIMRA show. Indexed universal life (IUL) once again led the charge, extending a sales run that has now produced records in four of the past five years.
Policy count rose 9% over the same period, the industry research body said in its preliminary US Life Insurance Sales Survey. The reading sits well above LIMRA's own full-year 2026 forecast of 2% to 6% growth, which the organization had pegged as only slightly above the long-run average of 3.1%.
Whole life remained the single largest slice of the market at 36%, with new premium up 9% to $1.6 billion and policy count climbing 13%. IUL new premium reached $1.1 billion, a 14% gain, and accounted for 25% of total new annualized premium plus excess. Six of the top 10 IUL carriers logged double-digit policy growth.
Variable universal life premium rose 12% to $729 million, while term life advanced 9% to $788 million. Fixed UL was the lone laggard, slipping 6% to $221 million in its sixth straight quarterly decline.
Sean Grindall (pictured above), senior vice president and chief member relations and solutions officer at LIMRA and LOMA, said the market had built on its 2025 momentum, with every product line bar fixed UL posting premium gains.
"Although a third of consumers are very/extremely worried about their individual finances and a majority are very/extremely concerned about the economy in general, demand for life insurance has not waned," Grindall said.
The latest numbers cap an extended run of records. LIMRA data, released previously, show new annualized premium hit all-time highs in 2021, 2022, 2024 and again in 2025, when the total cleared $17.5 billion on a 10% gain.
Set against Q1 2025, when premium reached $3.9 billion but policy count edged up just 1%, the latest quarter's 9% volume jump marks a sharp acceleration in unit sales.
Karen Terry, corporate vice president and head of LIMRA Insurance Research, credited whole life's strength largely to final expense products.
"While distribution capacity continues to increase in the final expense and instant/express market, many traditional WL carriers are seeing flat to negative growth, as recent success in the equity markets push many toward products more market related growth potential," Terry said.
Grindall has previously argued that mortality awareness lingering from the pandemic continues to anchor consumer interest.
Earlier LIMRA research has also flagged a steady drift among middle-income and mass affluent buyers toward IUL and variable universal life, drawn by retirement savings features and downside protection in choppy markets.
Millennials, meanwhile, have been gravitating to combination products bundling long-term care or other living benefits, as medical costs march higher.
