Last month, we reported voluntary new business annualized premium(sales) for 2016 were $7.630 billion, up almost 7 percent over 2015sales. This column takes a closer look at these results by productline and platform.

Term life was again the top-selling line of business this year,followed by dental, short-term disability (STD), accident andhospital indemnity. The graph (left) shows the mix of sales by lineof business.

Life insurance sales overall were up nearly 6percent in 2016, reaching $2.074 billion. Term accounted for 77percent of this, and sales for the line were up about 3 percentover 2015. UL/WL sales were up 18 percent in 2016 after a down yearin 2015. By product, 48 percent of the UL/WL sales were foruniversal life products and 52 percent were for whole life.

Total disability sales were $1.51 billion in 2016. Short-termdisability still represents the majority (66 percent) of thisamount. Both STD and LTD sales showed increases in 2016, with STDup 7 percent and LTD up almost 11 percent.

Related: Harris Poll finds growing interest about insurancebrands from millennials

The accident product line saw another increase in 2016, but therate was a modest 2 percent compared to 11 percent in 2015 and 9percent in 2014. Total accident sales were $957 million.

Critical illness sales increased 13 percent in 2016 afterincreases of 25 percent in 2015 and a 20 percent increase in 2014.Cancer sales continued to lag behind. In fact, cancer sales for2016 were down almost 4 percent as compared to 2015. Criticalillness NBAP was $556 million compared to $332 million forcancer.

Hospital indemnity, gap and supplemental medical productsgarnered about $622 million in sales for 2016, up after a down yearin 2015. The year-over-year change was up 16 percent.

When looking at voluntary sales by product platform, groupproduct sales continued to dominate individual products. The mixfor 2016 was almost 70 percent group and 30 percent individual.Sales for both platforms increased by almost 7 percent over 2015results.

The graph below shows the results over the last 10 years.

In our next column, we will review the results by distributionsegment and the percentage of voluntary business coming fromtakeovers.

The annual U.S. Voluntary/Worksite Sales Report is theindustry's most comprehensive and reliable source of data onvoluntary/worksite sales and inforce premium. This year's studyincludes data from 1997 through 2016 and detailed results for 65carriers. The report is available only to carriers participating inthe survey. For more information about participating in next year'ssurvey, contact us at [email protected].