When people talk about the life insurance market, they generally are referring to the large companies that offer the majority of the life policies in force out there like it's a monolithic market but it's not.  There are many kinds of companies offering life insurance on the market and also many different kinds of actual life insurance that can be purchased.  Occasionally, it's helpful to stand back and take a top-down view of the life insurance market so that we can make the most informed decision.  So let's dive right in to the market starting with the companies that make it up. 

Originally, the life insurance market was pretty clean and easy to understand.  The business was pretty much a function of underwriting, actuary, premium, and claims.  The best companies excelled with these 4 attributes with the focus being on actuarial success...the ability to predict as accurately as possible what the expected probability of  mortality is for a given demographic group.  In this respect, the actual life insurance market was pretty straight forward and a product akin to term life insurance was the dominant type of policy.  Needless to say, nothing ever stays that simple and new products and new carriers came on the scene.  The life insurance carriers themselves transformed and this has only accelerated in the last two decades to the life insurance market that we currently have.

Whole life products made their entrance and have remained on the scene for quite some time but this was only the beginning of what was to come in terms of life insurance market sophistication.  Whole life has gone through many different variants of designed with Variable, Universal, and slew of other accents to the underlying model for whole life.  All of these new additions to the life insurance market required that the carriers themselves morph into financial companies as well as life insurance companies since their success rode on the ability to maximize gains on assets that they held (in the form of life insurance premiums).  In order to return a fixed based amount or even maximize a variable amount demanded layers of financial sophistication among the life insurance carriers in the market.  You could argue this is good in that it provides a wealth of new options to the market but it also can have unintended consequences like the three lettered one called AIG.  There's also blurring of roles between traditional life insurance carriers and financial institutions for better and worse.  This is just on the carrier side but the life insurance options on the market have also exploded in variety.

The original model of pay a premium for a certain amount of life insurance has been spiced up in many ways with the advent of dozens of riders and plan designs.  There is seemingly a rider for any particular predilection a life insurance shopper may have to address real and imaginary fears.  We have argued that the bulk of riders do little more than increase the margin for life insurance companies on the market but ultimately, it's a personal decision the life insurance shopper must make and if an additional rider premium makes them sleep better at night,then by all means, that's worth something in itself. 

We also now have an unparalelled ability to compare and contrast almost the entire term life insurance market online.  This has worked to bring down price discrepancies within a given portion of the life insurance market and keep carriers in check.  Why would you pay one company 15% higher than another equally ranked carrier for the same amount of life insurance coverage?  You wouldn't...any more now that you can see them side by side.  The life insurance market has definitely change and for the most part, it has become better for the shopper as long as they remember what the core reason for life insurance is and avoid all the additional (and costly) add-ons.