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spk12: and welcome to the second quarter 2021 earnings release conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mike Majors, Executive Vice President, Administration and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
spk06: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Joining the call today are Gary Coleman and Larry Hutchison, our co-chief executive officers, Frank Svoboda, our chief financial officer, and Brian Mitchell, our general counsel. Some of our comments or answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements that are provided for general guidance purposes only. Accordingly, please refer to our earnings release, 2020 10-K, and any subsequent forms 10-Q on file with the SEC. Some of our comments may also contain non-GAAP measures. Please see our earnings release and website for discussion of these terms and reconciliations to GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to Gary Coleman.
spk03: Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. In the second quarter, net income was $200 million, or $1.92 per share, compared to $173 million, or $1.62 per share, a year ago. Net operating income for the quarter was $193 million, or $1.85 per share, an increase of 12% per share from a year ago. On a GAAP reported basis, return on equity as of June 30th was 9.0% for the first half of the year and 9.7% for the second quarter. Book value per share was $83.59. Excluding unrealized gains and losses on fixed maturities, return on equity was 12.4% for the first half of the year and 13.5% for the second quarter. In addition, book value per share grew 9% to $55.66. In our life insurance operations, premium revenue increased 9% from the year-ago quarter to $728 million. As noted before, we have seen improved percentage and premium collections since the onset of the pandemic. Life underwriting margin was $179 million, up 11% from a year ago. The increase in margin is due primarily to the higher premium and lower amortization related to the improved persistency. For the year, we expect live premium revenue to grow between 8 to 9 percent and underwriting margin to grow 5 to 6 percent. In health insurance, premium revenue grew 4 percent to $296 million and health underwriting margin was up 16% to $74 million. The increase in underwriting margin was primarily due to improved claims experience and persistency. For the year, we expect health premium revenue to grow between 4% and 5%, and underwriting margin to grow around 9%. Administrative expenses were $68 million for the quarter, up 10% from a year ago. As a percentage of premium, administrative expenses were 6.6% compared to 6.5% a year ago. For the full year, we expect administrative expenses to grow 8 to 9% and be around 6.7% of premium, due primarily to increased IT and information security costs, higher pension expense, and a gradual increase in travel and facility costs. I will now turn the call over to Larry for his comments on the second quarter marketing operations.
spk00: Thank you, Gary. We experienced strong sales growth during the second quarter, and we continue to make progress in agent recruiting. I will now discuss current trends at each distribution channel. At American Income Life, Life Premium is up 13% over the year-ago quarter to $348 million. and life underwriting margin was up 16% to $108 million. The higher underwriting margin is primarily due to improved persistency and higher sales in recent quarters. In the second quarter of 2020, sales were limited due to the onset of COVID. In the second quarter of 2021, net life sales were $73 million, up 42%. The increase in net life sales is primarily due to increased agent count and productivity. The average producing agent count for the second quarter was 10,478, up 25% from the year-ago quarter and up 6% from the first quarter. The producing agent count at the end of the second quarter was 10,406. The American Income Agency continues to generate positive momentum At Liberty National, life premiums were up 6% over the year ago quarter to $78 million, while life underwriting margin was down 16% to $16 million. The decline in underwriting margin is due primarily to higher policy obligations. Net life sales increased 67% to $18 million, and net health sales were $6 million, up 52% from the year ago quarter due primarily to increased agent count and increased agent productivity. The average producing agent count for the second quarter was 2,700, up 13% from the year-ago quarter, while down 1% from the first quarter. The producing agent count at Liberty National ended the quarter at 2,700. We continue to be encouraged by Liberty National's progress. At Family Heritage, health premiums increased 9% over the year-ago quarter to $85 million, and health underwriting margin increased 18% to $22 million. The increase in underwriting margin is due primarily to improved claims experience and improved persistency. Net health sales were up 41% to $19 million due to increased agent productivity. The average producing agent count for the second quarter was 1,220, down 2% from the year-ago quarter and down 5% from the first quarter. The producing agent count at the end of the quarter was 1,171. The agency emphasized agent productivity during the first half of the year. The focus is shifting more towards recruiting for the remainder of the year. In our direct-to-consumer division at Globe Life, life premiums were up 6% over the year-ago quarter to $249 million, and life underwriting margin increased 22% to $34 million. The increase in margin is due primarily to improved persistency. Net life sales were $42 million, down 14% from the year-ago quarter. This decline was expected due to the extraordinary level of sales activity seen in the second quarter last year during the onset of COVID. While sales declined from a year ago, we are pleased with this quarter's sales activity as it was 23% higher than the second quarter of 2019. At United American General Agency, Health premiums increased 3% over the year-ago quarter to $116 million, and health underwriting margin increased 16% to $18 million. The increase in margin was due to improved loss ratios and lower amortization. Net health sales were $12 million, up 1% compared to the year-ago quarter. It is still somewhat difficult to predict sales activity in this uncertain environment. but it will now provide projections based on trends we are seeing and knowledge of our business. We expect the producing agent count for each agency at the end of 2021 to be in the following ranges. American income life, 3% to 6% growth. Liberty National, 1% to 8% growth. Family heritage, a decline of 1% to 9%. Net life sales for the full year 2021 are expected to be as follows. American income life, an increase of 13 to 17%. Liberty National, an increase of 26 to 32%. Direct to consumer, a decrease of 10% to flat. Net health sales for the full year 2021 are expected to be as follows. Liberty National, an increase of 12 to 18%, Family Heritage, an increase of 4 to 8%, United American Individual Medicare Supplement, a decrease of 1% to an increase of 9%. I'll now turn the call back to Gary.
spk03: Thanks, Larry. We'll now turn to the investment operations. Excess investment income, which we define as net investment income plus required interest on net policy liabilities and debt, was $60 million, a 2% decline from the year-ago quarter. On a per-share basis, reflecting the impact of our share repurchase program, excess investment income grew 2%. For the full year, we expect excess investment income to decline 1% to 2%, but to grow around 2% only per share basis. In the second quarter, we invested $116 million in investment-grade fixed maturities, primarily in the financial, municipal, industrial sectors. We invested at an average yield of 3.69%, an average rating of A, and an average life of 35 years. We also invested $72 million in limited partnerships that invest in credit instruments. These investments are expected to produce incremental yield and are in line with our conservative investment philosophy. For the entire fixed maturity portfolio, the second quarter yield was 5.24%, down 14 basis points from the second quarter of 2020. As of June 30, the portfolio yield was 5.23%. Invested assets are $19.1 billion, including $17.5 billion of fixed maturities at amortized cost. Of the fixed maturities, $16.7 billion are investment grade with an average rating of A-, and below investment grade bonds are $764 million. compared to $802 million at the end of the first quarter. The percentage of below investment grade bonds to fixed maturities is 4.4%. Excluding that unrealized gains in the fixed maturity portfolio, the low investment grade bonds is a percentage of equity of 13%. Overall, the total portfolio is rated A minus compared to triple B plus a year ago. Consistent with recent years, bonds rated triple B are 55% of the fixed maturity portfolio. While this ratio is in line with the overall bond market, it is high relative to our peers. However, we have little or no exposure to higher risk assets such as derivatives, equities, residential mortgages, CLOs, and other asset-backed securities. Because we invest long, A key criterion utilized in our investment processes is that an issuer must have the ability to survive multiple cycles. We believe that the BBB securities that we acquire provide the best risk-adjusted, capital-adjusted returns due in large part to our unique ability to hold securities to maturity, regardless of fluctuations in interest rates or equity markets. Low interest rates continue to pressure investment incomes. At the midpoint of our guidance, we're assuming an average new money rate of around 3.45% for fixed maturities for the remainder of 2021. While we would like to see higher interest rates going forward, GlobeLife can thrive in a lower for longer interest rate environment. Extended low interest rates will not impact the GAAP or statutory balance sheets under current accounting rules since we sell non-interest sensitive protection products. Fortunately, the impact of lower new money rates on our investment income is somewhat limited, as we expect to have an average turnover of less than 2% per year in our investment portfolio over the next five years. Now I'll turn the call over to Frank for his comments on capital and liquidity.
spk05: Thanks, Gary. First, I want to spend a few minutes discussing our share repurchase program, available liquidity, and capital positions. The parent ended the second quarter with liquid assets of approximately $545 million. This amount is higher than last quarter because in June, the company issued a 40-year, $325 million junior subordinated note with a coupon rate of 4.15%. Net proceeds were $317 million. On July 15th, the company utilized the proceeds to call our $300 million 6.125% junior subordinated notes due 2056. The remaining proceeds will be used for general purposes. In addition to these liquid assets, the parent company will generate excess cash flows during the remainder of 2021. The parent company's excess cash flow, as we define it, results primarily from the dividends received by the parent from its subsidiaries, less the interest paid on debt and the dividends paid to GlobeLife shareholders. We anticipate the parent company's excess cash flow for the full year to be approximately $365 million, of which approximately $185 million will be generated in the second half of 2021. In the second quarter, the company repurchased 1.2 million shares of GlobeLife Inc. common stock at a total cost of $123 million at an average share price of $101.05. The total spent was higher than anticipated as we took advantage of the sharp drop in share price at the end of the quarter and accelerated approximately $30 million of purchases from the second half of the year to repurchase shares at an average price of $95.62. So far in July, we have spent $32 million to repurchase 343,000 shares at an average price of $93.81. Thus, for the full year through today, we have spent approximately $246 million to purchase 2.5 million shares at an average price of $97.96. Taking into account the liquid assets of $545 million at the end of the second quarter, plus approximately $185 million of excess cash flows that we are expected to generate in the second half of the year. Less than $32 million spent on share repurchases in July and the $300 million to call our junior subordinate a note. We will have approximately $400 million of assets available to the parent for the remainder of the year. As I'll discuss in more detail in just a few moments, We believe this amount is more than necessary to support the targeted capital levels within our insurance operations and maintain the share repurchase program for the remainder of the year. As noted on previous calls, we will use our cash as efficiently as possible. We still believe that share repurchases provide the best return or yield to our shareholders over other available alternatives. We anticipate share repurchases will continue to be a primary use of the parent's excess cash flows. It should be noted that the cash received by the parent company from our insurance subsidiaries is after they have made substantial investments during the year to issue new insurance policies, expand our information technology and other operational capabilities, as well as acquire new long-duration assets to fund future cash needs. As we progress through the remainder of the year, we will continue to evaluate our available liquidity. If more liquidity is available than needed, some portion of the excess could be returned to shareholders before the end of the year. However, at this time, the midpoint of our earnings guidance only reflects approximately $120 million of share repurchases over the remainder of the year. Our goal is to maintain our capital at levels necessary to support our current rating. As noted on previous calls, Globe Life has targeted a consolidated company action level RBC ratio in the range of 300 to 320%. At December 31, 2020, our consolidated RBC ratio was 309%. At this RBC ratio, our insurance subsidiaries have approximately $50 million of capital over the amount required at the low end of our consolidated RBC target of 300%. This excess capital, along with the roughly $400 million of liquid assets we expect to be available to the parent, provides sufficient liquidity to fund future capital needs. As we discussed on previous calls, the primary drivers of potential additional capital needs from the parent company in 2021 relate to investment downgrades and changes to the NEIC RBC factors related to investments, commonly referred to as C1 factors. To estimate the potential impact on capital due to changes in our investment portfolio, we continue to model several scenarios and stress tests. In our base case, we anticipate approximately $370 million of additional NAIC one-notch downgrades. In addition, we anticipate full adoption by the NAIC of the new Moody's NAIC C1 factors for 2021. Combined, Our base case assumes approximately $105 million of additional capital will be needed at our insurance subsidiaries to offset the adverse impact of the new factors and additional downgrades in order to maintain the midpoint of our consolidated RBC target. Bottom line, the parent company has ample liquidity to cover any additional capital that may be required and still have cash available to make our normal level of share repurchases. As previously noted, we will continue to evaluate the best use of any excess cash that could remain and will consider returning a portion of any excess to shareholders before the end of the year. We should be able to provide more guidance on that in our call next quarter. At this time, I'd like to provide a few comments related to the impact of COVID-19 on second quarter results. In the first half of 2021, the company has incurred approximately $49 million of COVID death claims, including $11 million in the second quarter. The $11 million incurred is $10 million less than incurred in the year-ago quarter and is in line with our expectations for the quarter. The total COVID death benefits in the second quarter included $4.6 million incurred in our direct-to-consumer division, or 2% of its second quarter premium income, $1.5 million incurred at Liberty National, or 2% of its premium for the quarter, and $3.5 million at American income, or 1% of its second quarter premium. At the midpoint of our guidance, we anticipate approximately 20,000 to 30,000 additional COVID deaths to occur over the remainder of 2021. As in prior quarters, we continue to estimate that we will incur COVID life claims of roughly $2 million for every 10,000 US deaths. We are estimating a range of COVID death claims of 53 to $55 million for the year, substantially unchanged from our previous guidance. Finally, with respect to our earnings guidance for 2021, in the second quarter, our premium persistency continued to be very favorable. and was better than we anticipated, leading to greater premium, higher policy obligations, and lower amortization as a percent of premium. At this time, we now expect lapse rates to continue at lower than pre-pandemic levels throughout the remainder of 2021, leading to higher premium and underwriting income growth in our life segment. We also increased the underwriting income in our health segment to reflect the favorable health claims experience we saw in the second quarter. Finally, the impact of our lower share price results in a greater impact from our share repurchases and results in fewer diluted shares. As such, we have increased the midpoint of our guidance from $7.36 to $7.44 with an overall range of $7.34 to $7.54 for the year ended December 31st, 2021. Those are my comments. I will now turn the call back to Larry.
spk00: Thank you, Frank. Those are our comments. We will now open the call up for questions.
spk12: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star 1 to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment.
spk11: to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. And we'll take our first question from Andrew Kligerman with Credit Suisse.
spk07: Hey, good morning, everyone. Maybe you could quantify the indirect COVID-19 claims during 2Q21. Do you still anticipate total and indirect claims of 25 million from 2Q21 through the year end, or has your outlook improved?
spk05: Sure, Andrew. With respect to the second quarter, we had anticipated around $15 million for the quarter down from the $25 million that we saw in the first quarter. We now estimate that they were closer to actually $22 million of excess obligations or around 3% of premium in the second quarter. So this is about $7 million higher than what we thought. This increase was mostly due to the better persistency we're seeing. Remember, the better persistency requires us to keep more reserves on the books. So in fact, out of the $22 million of these excess obligations that we had in the quarter about 60% or around $14 million is from the lower lapses. And then the other around $8 million relates to other higher non-COVID claim activity. The actual claims around the medical and non-medical was largely in line with what we anticipated. So again, the higher, the $7 million higher than what we kind of thought really related to the better persistency. For the full year, We now anticipate that these excess policy obligations will probably be around $70 million. This is around 2.4% of premium, and that's up from roughly the $50 million that we kind of talked about last quarter. Of the 2.4% of premium, it does look like about 1.5% of that will relate to higher reserves due to the lower lapses, and about 0.9% will relate to higher non-COVID claim activity. Again, the increase of that $20 million from what we had talked about last quarter relates to the impact of the lower lapses and the reserve that we're required to retain on the policies that really didn't last as we had anticipated.
spk07: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Then just my follow-up is, in the direct-to-consumer channel, I'm curious about Internet and inbound phone calls, which were previously cited to be growing more quickly. Is this still the case this quarter? Is Global Life exploring any new direct-to-consumer channel partners for growth as well?
spk00: I don't think there are new channels. We continue to have the same marketing strategy, basically. We have four channels in direct-to-consumer. We have the internet, we have the inbound phone calls, we have the insert media plus the mail. I think we're seeing a gradual shift, a very gradual shift. The electronic channel is growing the most quickly, particularly the internet, but still the four channels are interrelated. And so the real growth will come as we use analytics and testing to increase our circulation and our mail volumes and our traffic on the internet.
spk11: Thank you. Thank you. And we'll take our next question.
spk12: from John Barnage with Piper Sandler.
spk08: Great. Thank you. Can you maybe talk about how you think through the strength in life sales? Does it seem to be more based on the strong agent growth over the last year with maybe those agents that are new selling to their closest networks or more around pandemic awareness of life? I'm really just trying to dimension whether the strength that we've seen is a pull forward or not. Thank you.
spk00: I think always our live sales are related to growth or distribution, so agent count is a very important component of that. However, if we look at American Income, I think the primary driver of the live sales growth and will continue to be the agent growth. You know, we had a 25% in average agent growth quarter-for-quarter. Liberty National's a little different story. There, in the Q2, our worksite sales were up 75% compared to the second quarter of 2020. Its worksite sales actually were up 12% sequentially. What we're seeing there is that the return of not just virtual enrollments or the addition of virtual enrollments, but the return of on-site sales for worksite is really helping Liberty National. You know, I think that Liberty National and Family Heritage both think that this year the growth will come more from productivity. We see a greater percentage of agents submitting business. And, of course, in all three agencies, as those agents have more experience, you'll see the average premium written per agent will also increase. So there are really different drivers at different points in time for distribution.
spk08: Okay, and then my follow-up question, this isn't really related to the indirect COVID question, but last quarter you talked about increased deaths of despair from like overdoses, suicides being 20%, 80% being delays in cares like Alzheimer's and cardiac. Can you maybe talk about what you're seeing there a little bit and your expectations going forward? Thank you.
spk05: Yeah, when you do look at the total, kind of the mix of that, about 80% still is really related to the medical, the side versus some of the non-medical causes. Again, I think for the year, we probably anticipate that we'll continue to see those at elevated levels, even though we do anticipate those to you know, be trending down, you know, over the course of the year, you know, as access to health care and all that, you know, tends to improve. You know, for the full year, you know, we still anticipate that we'll probably see, you know, excess claims, if you will, you know, around $28 million or, you know, roughly 0.9 or 1% of premium.
spk11: Thank you for your answers. Thank you. And we'll take our next question from Ryan Krueger with KBW.
spk09: Hi, good morning. I guess first I had a follow-up on the persistency impact. So you talked about the 1.5% increase to your policy benefit ratio from higher reserves. Can you comment on how much of a positive impact would be occurring within the amortization line as an offset to that?
spk03: Yeah, from the amortization side, it's a little bit less than 1%, so it doesn't fully offset the increase in policy obligations, but it largely does.
spk09: Got it. And then I guess in regards to agent recruiting, I think you're Some of your guidance for year-end agent count at American income suggests, I think, some declining agents from where we're at now. I guess, can you give a little more color on that? Are you seeing any negative impact from labor market conditions on your ability to recruit new agents?
spk00: Sure, if you'd like to give that. And I think the decline is only a family heritage. I think in the script, I referenced the actual growth.
spk09: Yeah, I was referring to...
spk00: I think American income, you had up three to six, but that's... Well, a range of three to six percent. Everybody national, a range of one to eight. And Family Heritage, we think it'll be down from nine to negative one percent. Just to talk about recruiting a little bit, I do think growing agent count is going to be a challenge through the end of 2021. Let's remember a year ago, there were many unemployed, more importantly, underemployed recruits. You know, many businesses were shut down, hours reduced for many workers, and layoffs were occurring everywhere. Today, we see just the opposite. We see help-wanted signs in most businesses. And we see a dramatic increase in work opportunities on the job boards. So I think our producing agent growth will slow in the short run. However, as the economy returns to normal growth levels, we believe we'll see a continued growth in our agent count in line with our historical levels. I think the best indicator of future agent growth is always growth in middle management. When we look at that at American Income here today, we've had a 70% increase in middle management. In Q2, Liberty National had a 6% increase in middle management. Family Heritage had a 13% increase in middle management. That's important because middle managers do watch the recruiting and training within the company. I'll also state that agent account growth is always a stair-step process, and we don't expect to see constant growth quarter to quarter. Even year-over-year, over the past four years, producing Asian counties, agencies growing at a compound rate, had American income of approximately 9% and 12% of family heritage in Liberty National. However, when you go back, as an example, Liberty National from 2016 to 2017, we had 19% agency growth the next year, 2017. The next two-year period, which is 17 to 18, we had 2.5% growth, followed by 23% growth the next year. And the reason it stair-steps is it takes time to develop mental management, and you want your productivity to go up over time so you keep those agents. That's kind of a long explanation, but we have every confidence we'll grow agents, our agents will grow, right? Producing agents will continue to grow. Remember, it's going to be a stair-step process.
spk11: Understood. Thanks for the comments. Thank you. And we'll take our next question from Tom Gallagher with Evercore.
spk02: Good morning. Just a question on persistency. I think I heard you say you now think the better persistency is more likely to be permanent. And if that's true, that would bode well for future premium growth in life insurance, clearly. And with the 8% to 9% you're doing this year, assuming you continue to have good persistency and sales trends remain within a reasonable range, do you think for 2022 we'd be looking at continued growth above your historic ranges for premium growth for life insurance, maybe closer to 6% or 7% at least, even if it's down a bit? Or how do you see that changing? those dynamics playing out.
spk03: Tom, I don't know about what percentage it's going to be. In the next call, we'll give some guidance of 2022. I would anticipate we continue to have growth rates that are higher than the pre-pandemic levels.
spk05: The one thing I would like to add on that is that, Tom, we didn't want to infer that we think that the better persistency is permanent. um i we do think that it's going to last throughout the end of 2021 so we do see it you know continuing at the favorable levels we'll be able to give a little bit more insight i think next call is when we really kind of dig into 2022 where we really think the persistency levels are going to go so i think we'll be able to get some better uh you know views on on where we think that persistency will go in 2022 but we are definitely encouraged with uh the you know continued um you know, high levels of persistency this year, and that should help, as I said, you know, to buoy that premium growth, at least in the, you know, foreseeable future.
spk02: Okay. And just on the COVID mortality impacts, I guess the direct ones, you're forecasting 20 to 30K mortality per over the rest of the year. I think the IMHE forecasts are showing about double that amount. So just curious how you're deriving your estimates there.
spk05: Yeah, we do take into account several different sources that are out there. IHME is one of those. It is probably looking at what they were having probably a good week ago, just as we then kind of need to apply Some of the forecasts that they've got, look at those trends, look at what they're looking at by state, applying that to our in-force to do quite a bit of work to come up with our estimates of what that impact is. I do understand that in some of the last few days, they may have increased their estimates now, and clearly if if that higher number of U.S. deaths is in fact realized, we would end up being more at the lower end of our range. I kind of looked at it. If we ended up averaging, let's just say, 250 deaths a day over the course of the remainder of the year, you'd end up at around 45, I think, thousand deaths. So in your point, around roughly two times of what we've put in our midpoint, that'd be about an extra three cents impact overall. So that would still be within our range. And so I think that's a little wider range that we have kind of normally, if you will, helps to take into consideration some of that changes on where that might go. So it's pretty hard to tell right now exactly what the death levels are going to be.
spk02: Gotcha. And then just one last, if I could fit it in, the So the 105 million of the combined impacts from C1 RBC factor changes plus expected ratings downgrades, can you isolate how much of the 105 million is specifically from the C1 factor changes?
spk05: About 75 million is from C1. We're probably, you know, absent. The C1 is probably about a 15-point reduction, if you will, in our RBC ratio just in and of itself. So that's around $75 million.
spk12: Gotcha. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll take our next question from Eric Bass with Autonomous Research.
spk10: Hi. Thank you. I guess maybe to start to follow up on Tom's question on sort of COVID mortality, are you seeing any changes at all in terms of your sensitivities as you're getting more vaccinated population? Do you have a sense of how kind of your exposure differs between kind of the insured population versus the general population on vaccination rates, and is vaccination status something you're able to ask about on new policy applications?
spk05: Yeah, right now we're not, you know, seeing, as we look, and I think the sensitivity generally around, you know, 2 million of claims still per 10,000 deaths, that's really seemed to be holding pretty well. You know, clearly, you know, as with the higher vaccinations, especially at the older ages, you know, that is, you know, continuing to, you know, to help lower, if you will, some of those overall death rates. So, you know, we do, as we look at our overall in-force, you know, we don't have any great exposure to any one particular age. It's pretty well spread out, you know, from really age 10 to, through age 50 is roughly, you look at any 10 year period of time and it's roughly the same percentage of our overall portfolio. And then it kind of really goes down as you get to over age 60, but they're over age 50 in fact. So we don't feel like we're overexposed into any one particular, even if it ends up being a vaccinated or unvaccinated condition.
spk10: Got it. And then maybe moving to the health side, You mentioned the favorable claims this quarter. Was that just a continuation of lower benefits utilization? If that's the case, how are you thinking about that trend into the second half of the year for MedSupp and other health products?
spk05: On the MedSupp, it is largely more utilization. What we're really seeing there is we're seeing Higher utilization than we had in 2020 and really even higher utilization than 2019. But it is lower than what you would expect from a trend perspective. So it's still running a little bit favorable if you kind of look at where 19 levels were and what we'd expect from a normal trend perspective. You know, on the accidents and in our cancer blocks, that we really have at, let's say, Liberty and American Income, it's more incurral. It's not so much of a utilization of services as it is just an incurral of claims, and that's where we're just seeing some disfavorable incurral rates at this point in time that's really helped with some of the lower policy obligations in those particular lines as well as, to some degree, at Family Heritage.
spk10: Thank you. And then one last follow-up just on MedSupp. Do you have any exposure to potential cost pressures from the new Alzheimer's treatment, which I believe is covered under Medicare Part B? Would any of that fall under MedSupp or wouldn't it?
spk05: Yeah, there would be potentially some exposure, but ultimately we do have that included in our guidance. Okay, thank you.
spk12: Thank you. And again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1. We'll take our next question from Jimmy Bular with JP Morgan.
spk01: Hi. So first, just a question on your direct response margins. Obviously, they're pretty weak. Last quarter, they improved this quarter significantly. Other than just the impact of COVID, do you feel that this was a normal quarter overall, or were there any sort of positive or negative puts and takes as you're thinking about long-term margins in the direct response business on the life side?
spk03: Yeah, Jimmy, as far as other changes, you can see that we had lower amortization rates for the quarter. During the second quarter, we adjusted our amortization rates throughout for all our distribution systems. We've seen a bigger impact in the direct response side, lowering that amortization rate. It was a little over 22% versus 25% in the second quarter of last year. That's going to continue through the year We should be at around 23% of premium for amortization in direct response versus over 25% last year. The reason for that reduced amortization is two things. One is the increased sales and also the improved persistency both first year and renewal. In addition to direct response, the high sales that we had last year were – excuse me, the acquisition costs we had, they were fixed. So the acquisition costs per policy last year were lower than it has been. So there was less DAC that we were putting on the books. So the combination of higher sales, lower acquisition costs per policy, plus the improved persistency generating more premium revenue. Since we amortize our DAC over the premium revenue over the life of the policies, having that higher premium revenue has resulted in a longer amortization percentage. We should, again, see that through the remainder of this year.
spk01: And then next year, would it reset based on what your views on persistency are for 2022? Yes. Okay. And then on agent retention, I guess given the improved labor market, especially in the services industry, it probably will affect your ability to recruit people. But how do you think about how it affects your ability to retain the agents that you've hired over the past year? Because you have added a lot of agents. And do you see any sort of impacts on your agent retention trends as the economy continues to improve?
spk00: We look at agent retention, American income. Agent retention has increased over the last two years, and it's a little early in 2021. Measure obviously six months and nine months and 12 months retention, but based on the trend in American income, we're seeing better agent retention. Liberty National and Family Heritage, the retention is largely unchanged. We look at 2019 and 20 and again it's a little early to talk about retention. I think there are more job opportunities, obviously right now, so I think terminations may be a little higher through the end of the year. At the same time, we expect our recruiting to increase. as the economy returns to normal. And so I think we'll have normal retention, normal recruiting rates through the end of, particularly the end of 21 going into 22.
spk01: And then typically as agents get tenured, you'd see a pickup in their productivity. Any reason to assume that the increase in agents over the past year or so won't translate to sort of continued momentum on sales, regardless of what happens with new recruiting, or are there other factors that might slow down sales?
spk00: Jimmy, can you repeat that question? Your connection is not that long.
spk01: Yeah, so you've added a lot of agents over the past year, and regardless of what happens with recruiting, I would assume that the higher number of agents would result in strong sales. Obviously, the growth rates vary with comps and stuff, but the absolute level of sales should be higher than they used to be pre-pandemic, just given the increased number of agents, especially as those agents get more and more tenured and their productivity increases. But is that the correct assumption, or are there other factors that you're thinking about as you're looking at your sales over the next year to two years?
spk00: Thank you for repeating the question. Yes, it is our assumption that obviously the biggest driver of sales is going to be the increase in number of agents, and the producing agent count is going to grow due to the guidance we've given. The other driver of that is productivity, and actually productivity is a little bit lower at American income. Q2 21 versus Q2 20, that's because of the increase in agents. And new agents were always a little less productive. So as our agent growth from 19 and 20 translates into 21, all three agencies, as those agents receive better training and as they become more veteran agents, you'll see that increase, particularly with family heritage. Q2, while the recruiting is off, we had our best quarter ever for productivity. We had a 30% increase in health sales per agent. We won 21 from sequentially, and also had a 45% increase in health sales per agent over the year-ago quarter. That's because while recruiting was down, As the agents did less recruiting, we had more veteran agents, the productivity went up. We also saw a productivity increase at Liberty National. As we have more and more veteran agents, they're much more productive.
spk11: Okay, thank you. Thank you.
spk12: And that concludes today's question and answer session. I will now turn the call back to Mike Majors for closing remarks.
spk06: All right. Thank you for joining us this morning. Those are our comments, and we'll talk to you again next quarter.
spk12: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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