{"id":493340,"date":"2024-09-24T14:12:38","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T18:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/?p=493340"},"modified":"2024-09-24T14:12:38","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T18:12:38","slug":"insurers-paid-record-benefits-in-2023-clhia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/news\/research-and-markets\/insurers-paid-record-benefits-in-2023-clhia\/","title":{"rendered":"Insurers paid record benefits in 2023: CLHIA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Canada\u2019s life and health insurers paid a record $128 billion in benefit claims in 2023, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) said Tuesday in its <a href=\"http:\/\/clhia.uberflip.com\/i\/1526931-canadian-life-and-health-insurance-facts-2024-edition\/0?\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">annual statistics report<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The total was up 13% from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/news\/industry-news\/insurers-continued-paying-record-benefits-in-year-three-of-pandemic\/\">previous record set in 2022<\/a>, and up 68% from a decade ago, the report said.<\/p>\n<p>Life insurance claims totalled $17 billion, up from $16 billion in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>The CLHIA said 23 million Canadians own $5.7 trillion in life insurance coverage, with total coverage increasing steadily over the past decade, given the need to cover larger mortgages and a higher cost of living.<\/p>\n<p>Average life insurance protection per household was $483,000, the report said, up from $474,000 in 2022, and represents about five times household income.<\/p>\n<p>Most life insurance (83% of premiums) was purchased by individuals through a life agent or advisor, the report said, with the remainder representing premiums from group plans.<\/p>\n<p>Also, individual life insurance now equals 65% of the value of total policies in force, the report said \u2014 up from 58% a decade ago. The increase was driven mostly by term life insurance, it said.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly $63 billion was paid in retirement benefits, up from nearly $54 billion in 2022. Over 80% of these benefits were provided through segregated funds, the report said.<\/p>\n<p>Health claims set a new record of $48 billion. Prescription drug costs continued to account for the largest share of health benefits, the report said, at $15 billion in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>The $730 million paid in mental health support claims was a 12% increase from the previous year.<\/p>\n<p>Total premiums collected by insurers in 2023 rose to $157 billion, up from $145 billion a year prior. The increase was led by premiums for annuities and segregated funds (up 9.1%), health insurance (up 8.7%), and life insurance (up 6.4%), the report said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Life insurance coverage has increased over the past decade given larger mortgages and a higher cost of living<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186339,"featured_media":491444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2313,2312],"tags":[2845,2591,2985,2911,3903,2830,2319],"yst_prominent_words":[6044,44968,21822,17519,17462,17445,15836,10106,7323,7035,6889,6878,6498,6461,6049,2257,6040,6023,4738,4733],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186339"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493340"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493354,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493340\/revisions\/493354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493340"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=493340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}