Securing Illinois Life Insurance Quotes that are right for you is something that everyone should do regardless of their stage in life. Indeed, one of the often overlooked facts about life insurance of any type is that it is the only type of insurance that actually gets CHEAPER the younger you are! So delaying getting Illinois life insurance quotes is really costing you money.
In this article I am going to take a look at life insurance in Illinois both from the perspective of a consumer, and also taking a deeper look at the state of the insurance market in Illinois, and what that might mean to your insurance premiums both now and in the future.
Illinois Life Insurance - The Facts...
Illinois itself is a big market for life insurance with 540 life insurance companies being registered to sell life insurance in the state, and 64 of those actually being legally domiciled in Illinois.
Whilst doing business with an insurance company that is domiciled in your state is not essential (Idaho for example only has 1 life insurance company that is actually domiciled in the state out of 451, so you wouldn’t have a lot of choice if it was essential!) It is nevertheless a good sign, because any company that is legally domiciled in a state does in a sense have more stake in making sure that the state prospers, and are likely to tread a little more carefully with the state legislature and insurance regulators when it comes to treating consumers in the right way.
The finance and insurance business across the whole of the United States had 6,607,511 paid employees in 2007 and over 500,000 different establishments involved according to the US Census Bureau. So the insurance sector across the country is massive, and that is equally true of insurance in Illinois.
If we look specifically at Illinois then we can see that Illnoisans had death cover estimated at $1.3 trillion (note - this is ‘cover’ not revenue), and over 7 million individual life insurance policies, which overall had an average of $110,000 worth of cover per policy-holder.
According to the American Council of Life Insurers $185 billion of the life insurance companies assets (which are obviously very substantial) are invested in Illinois, including about $150 billion in stocks and bonds, $2 billion in real estate in Illinois, and $14 billion in mortgage loans made to farms, commercial and residential properties.
What this all adds up to for the average Illinois consumer who is looking for Illinois Life Insurance Quotes is that there has never been a better time to buy life insurance, because there is currently a lot of competition in the market and it is obviously worth a lot of money to the insurance companies to secure your business.
The Top Ten Life Insurance Companies in Illinois - By The Stats...
Here is a list of The Top Ten Life insurance Companies in Illinois in 2009
(This is based on statistics from the Illinois Insurance Department, for the top ten life insurance companies for ordinary life business. The premiums are in dollars.)
1/ Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 617,400,800
Percent of Total – 13.39%
2/ State Farm Life Insurance Company
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 209,633,956
Percent of Total – 4.55%
3/ John Hancock Life Insurance Company USA
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 204,285,737
Percent of Total – 4.43%
4/ Country Life Insurance Company
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 198,852,289
Percent of Total – 4.31%
5/ Lincoln National Life Insurance Company
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 190,553,762
Percent of Total – 4.13%
6/ Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 146,284,169
Percent of Total – 3.17%
7/ Pacific Life Insurance Company
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 139,296,647
Percent of Total – 3.02%
8/ Prudential Insurance Company of America
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 116,568,108
Percent of Total – 2.53%
9/ New York Life Insurance Company
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 115,259,027
Percent of Total – 2.50%
10/ American General Life Insurance Company
Direct Illinois Life Insurance Premiums – 112,176,361
Percent of Total – 2.43%
Despite those impressive figures, sales of life insurance in the last 30 years have actually experienced a sharp decline across the United States as a whole, and so the life insurance companies in Illinois, and throughout the United States, are becoming increasingly competitive to secure your business.
Those top ten life insurance companies in Illinois accounted for 44.43% of the total share. But the next 15 after that accounted for a further 23.02% (67.45% market share for the top 25 life insurance companies in Illinois), and so even the life companies OUTSIDE of the top 25 in Illinois are still generating about a third of all the ordinary life insurance business in Illinois.
This might not sound like a lot, but when you are talking about figures in the hundreds of millions of dollars, it is easy to see how even relatively small life insurers in Illinois are STILL generating enormous sums of money.
The Road Ahead For Life Insurance In Illinois...
This competitive trend has only increased with the age of the internet, because computers are now enabling people to find Illinois Life Insurance Quotes from the comfort of their own homes, without having to even speak to a broker, or more usually the company directly.
And this approach of "cutting out the middleman" has meant that customers are now more dependent than ever on finding accurate information online before they take the plunge with an Illinois Life Insurance Company. As they no longer tend to have the buffer zone of an impartial Insurance Agent to advise them.
In the last couple of years sales of life insurance have gone up a little, but it is still down on the late 1990’s. For example, according to statistics published by the American Council of Life Insurers in 2009 there were actually an average annual percentage change of 1.4% LESS individual life insurance policies every year in force than in 1999, and 3.4% LESS group life insurance policies in force between the same two dates.
As any salesman will know, it is far easier to close a sale in person, and even phone selling, when the call has been requested, is far more effective at getting people to buy a product then even the fanciest internet sales letter.
In effect then, whilst in many ways the internet has been a good thing for insurance companies, it has also meant that their stranglehold on the sales process has been loosened, and they need to come up with better ways of communicating the benfits of their particular life insurance policies, because insurance agents are no longer doing it for them to the same degree.
The impact this move away from insurance brokers selling insurance and now when more sales of life insurance are moving online should not be underestimated, because there is now a tendency on the part of the life insurance companies to seek out ever more innovative ways to communicate with their potential customers.
Also, because they know that switching companies has now become much easier, and business generally is lower, there is much more talk in the industry than ever before about improving customer service, and making sure that customer retention is placed much higher on the list of priorities.
In a very real sense we are in a whole new world when it comes to selling insurance, and by extension the consumer is in a whole new world when it comes to buying it.
The Good News About Getting Illinois Life Insurance Quotes Online...
The good news though is that in terms of getting Cheap Illinois Life Insurance Quotes it is now possible to compare multiple companies life cover much more quickly, and to much more swiftly get a good overview of what the state of play of the market is when it comes to the type of costs and conditions you can reasonably expect a life insurance company in Illinois to provide to you.
It has to be said that this does miss out much of the personal touch that is the case if you buy through an insurance broker directly, and does also mean that rather than relying on their expertise to choose the best policy for you, that you will have to do your own research and due diligence into the Illinois Life Insurance products that are available.
However, on the other side of the coin, it does also mean that you won’t have to pay out heavy broker fees to get cover that you could have found yourself.
If you want to get a selection of Illinois Life Insurance Quotes right now then scroll up to the top of this page.
Illinois Life Insurance – The Details
The particular legal requirements for Illinois Insurance are written down in the State Insurance Code of Illinois, which is a set of rules as to how insurance should be regulated in the State of Illinois.
You can find a copy of the Illinois Insurance Code here:
This is clearly quite a challenging read, and unless you a interested in really delving into the specific legal details of Illinois Insurance you may find it a little heavy. But nevertheless, it is the basis on which insurance is regulated in Illinois.
Illinois Life Insurance Resources
The Illinois Department of Insurance
It is the Illinois Department of Insurances job to oversee the implementation of the Illinois Insurance Code, to provide information to consumers, and to also provide information to insurance professionals and Illinois Insurance Companies.
There is quite a nice Illinois Life Insurance section on the Illinois Department of Insurance which talks about the best ways to get Illinois Life Insurance Quotes that are really what you need, and also discussing the different types of life insurance that you might buy.
The Illinois Department of Insurances website is super-confusing, and so it would be easy to brush past it without ever actually finding the information about Illinois Insurance that you really need. One page however that is worth a look is the reports page. It is still confusing, but there are some real insights (if you care to look) about the conduct of insurance in Illinois.
