Last month in our first of a three-part series, we reviewed the voluntary industry's overallsales for 2015, which were $7.138 billion, up 3.6percent over 2014. This column takes a closer look at these resultsby product line and platform.

Life insurance once again claimed the largest share of totalvoluntary sales at $1.959billion, representing 27 percent of the total market. This was anincrease of 4.4 percent over 2014. Term accounted for 79 percent ofthe total life new business annualized premium (NBAP), with salesfor the line up almost 9 percent. UL/WL sales were down almost 10percent.

Total disability sales were $1.37 billion in 2015 and accountedfor just under 20 percent of voluntary NBAP. Short-term disabilitysales still represent the majority of sales at 67 percent of thedisability totals. STD sales were up 2 percent compared to 2014,while LTD sales increased just over three percent.

The big winners again this year, in terms of the largestincreases in sales over the prior year, were critical illness and accidentinsurance, up 25 percent and 11 percent respectively. Criticalillness continued to outpace cancer sales, with $491 million inNBAP compared to $346 million for cancer. Cancer sales wererelatively flat for the year, up only 0.9 percent. Total accidentsales were $943 million and accounted for about 13 percent of totalvoluntary sales.

Hospital indemnity/supplemental medical product sales, whichinclude hospital indemnity, gap and supplemental medical products,were down this year after having one of the highest productincreases in 2014. Total sales for this line in 2015 were about$535 million, down from $608 million in 2014. The year-over-yearchange was down by 12 percent, primarily due to several companieshaving slight decreases and some having larger decreases as aresult of discontinuing their limited benefit sales.

When looking at voluntary sales by product platform, productsfiled on a group platform continued to dominate over individualproducts. The mix of sales by platform for 2015 was 70 percentgroup and 30 percent individual. Group product sales increased by10.5 percent this year, while individual sales were down about onetenth of a percent.

Our next column will review the results by distribution segmentand discuss the future outlook of voluntary sales.