Medicare Supplement Premium Grows to $35.65 Billion
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) recently released the 2021 Medicare supplement data. This data set includes earned premiums, incurred claims, and in force lives that is compiled from the Medicare Supplement Insurance Experience Exhibit that carriers submit as part of their Annual Statement filing.
Over the coming weeks, CSG Consulting will be making blog posts outlining findings based on the NAIC data combined with other public sources.
This week’s post will focus on earned premium, incurred loss ratios, and in force lives.
Earned Premium
The total earned premium across all carriers in 2021 was $35.65 billion. This represented a 1.7% increase over 2020 or $590 million.
This is a lower increase than was realized in the prior five years. Between 2016 and 2020, the earned premium increase ranged from 3.2% – 6.8% or $1.1 billion – $1.96 billion.
Incurred Loss Ratio
The total incurred loss ratio across all carriers in 2021 was 77.4%. This represented an increase of 5.0% from the 72.4% realized in 2020.
It was anticipated that 2021 would have a higher incurred loss ratio as incurred claims were suppressed in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, represented by an 8.0% decrease in the incurred loss ratio from 2019 to 2020.
Excluding 2020, the 2021 incurred loss ratio was the lowest realized since 2017 when it came in at 77.8%.
In Force Lives
The total in force lives as of year-end 2021 across all carriers was 14.44 million. This represented a 0.7% decrease from 2020 or 96k lives.
This marked a change from the positive trends that had been realized between 2016 and 2020 where increases ranged from 0.4%-5.6% or 55k-692k lives.
Data Source: National Association of Insurance Commissioners, by permission. The NAIC does not endorse any analysis or conclusions based upon the use of its data.
