[epmos]

I don't think that would explain the difference. Using a quick look at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_totaldeaths I see covid deaths as:

  2019 : 0
  2020 : 361,236
  2021 : 461,460 ( 1.28x  2020 )
  2022 : 191,352 ( 1.06x* 2020 )

But payouts look like this:

  2020 : 1.09x 2019
  2021 : 2.86x 2019, 2.64x 2020

If there were under-reporting in 2021 similar to 2020 then we should see about a 1.06x payout difference in 2021, not 2.64x. Not recording deaths as covid wouldn't affect life insurance payouts. So there would need to be ~2.64x more covid deaths in 2021 (after most folks got the vaccine in March-May) than in 2020 with no vaccines. This doesn't seem right to me. What would explain this is if while covid didn't get much worse in 2021 people are dying more anyway, or the covid deaths are more concentrated in insured people.

Just getting sick doesn't trigger a life insurance payout, but a glance at cumulative cases vs deaths on the data tracker suggests that in 2021 covid is less deadly than in 2020 on a per-case basis. That matches what I see on the news and people around me pretty well.

I suspect that the life insurance vs covid risks skew differently with age. Life insurance policies tend to be high for working people and lower once retired. Since the purpose of life insurance is to replace lost income for the insured's dependents most people drop or reduce their policies when they retire. So that 2.64x factor on payouts should be under the factor for deaths unless the deaths are concentrated in younger, healthier people. I have no idea what that correction would look like so I ignored it.

* Assuming the second half of 2022 which hasn't happened yet looks like the first half. Reality won't be exactly 2x the total so far.