That things are bad is no secret.  But every once in a while, as we slog through this meltdown, a statistic or set of data just pops out and reminds you that no matter how bad you thought things were, they’re worse.

What did it for me this week was reading through LIMRA International’s release on first quarter sales figures of the spectrum of life insurance products.

Even old-timers might have a hard time remembering when sales took such a nosedive, since as LIMRA’s CEO Bob Kerzner remarked, “…the last time quarterly sales dropped this much was in 1943.”  (And if you’re one of those who can sit around the cracker barrel and reminisce, “If you think this is bad, sonny, you should have been around in the summer of ‘43…”, well, all the more power to you.)

Overall, LIMRA reports, premium from individual life sales dropped, slid, plunged, plummeted, nosedived (take your pick) an amazing 26% from the year before.

Every product line was hit, LIMRA says, with variable life premium off a massive 61%.   Universal life, down 33%.  Variable UL, off 61%. 

The only two lines that didn’t enter double-digit loss territory were term (off  4%) and whole life (down 5%).

Additionally, totals for face amount and number of policies sold were off 8% in both cases.

These stats alone show how much people are hurting and how far down on the totem pole life insurance (unfortunately) sits when filling your stomach, keeping the roof over your head or the repo guys at bay are more important and pressing than what’s going to happen if you die.  Some of these people, after all, feel like they’re dying every day.

I can’t remember for a fact, but it seems to me that I’ve already used the mythic image of Sisyphus to describe the life insurance industry’s seemingly doomed challenge of getting Congress to approve an optional federal charter.  Just when the king of Corinth gets the stone almost to the top of the hill, down it goes. 

So, not to repeat ourselves, let’s turn to another myth to describe where the industry is now in what has come to be a decade-long quest.  My Webster’s gives this description of Tantalus: “a son of Zeus, doomed in the lower world to stand in water that always recedes when he tries to drink it and under branches of fruit that always remain just out of reach.”

Needless to say this is where the word tantalizing comes from.  And tantalizing is a good word for how the life business (or at least many of its companies) sees the prospect of an optional federal charter.  We’re not really sure how it’s going to work, but we know we’re going to like it. 

Actually, not knowing how it’s going to work may be part of the attraction for these companies, since they feel they are quite familiar with what they perceive as the clunkiness and annoyance of state insurance regulation.

There’s another factor going on here.  In two words: Regulatory envy. 

Life insurers are such a well-behaved bunch, but among those businesses that are financial colossi (banks, mutual funds, life insurers), they get the least respect.  This, of course, brings to mind another mythic figure: Rodney Dangerfield.

Life insurers look at banks, for instance, and are just green over the fact that banks can pick their charter and thus choose to be either federally or state regulated.  And if they choose to be federally regulated, boy oh boy, what a bag of goodies that brings with it.  Banks don’t have to be well-behaved, always minding their P’s & Q’s.  Banks can do all sorts of things that life insurers in their wildest dreams wouldn’t think of doing and their regulators will usually cheer them on or, at the very least, bite their tongues. 

Life just isn’t fair when you don’t have a federal regulator in your court.

So, what happens when-once again–the water seems to be within the reach of Tantalus?  What else?  The New York Times writes an editorial saying in effect that drinking the water is the worst thing that could happen anyway for poor old Tant and everybody else.

And so on May 21 the Times blasted the OFC bill introduced by Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Cal., saying, “If the bill were enacted, the race to the regulatory depths would continue, and the nation would be headed in exactly the wrong regulatory direction.”

Needless to say, those officials who have been doing the heavy lifting on this issue for years reacted with fury.  The Times “has it wrong,” said the American Council of Life Insurers.  The “editorial is misleading at best,” said a spokesman for the Financial Services Roundtable.  

Pretty strong words for organizations that usually step more gingerly when criticizing the newspaper of record.  

Then, providentially it would seem, the very next day Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., introduced his own bill that creates an Office of Insurance Information in the Treasury Department. The OII is often seen as a precursor to an OFC, a foot in the door of federal regulation, so to speak.  Life insurance officials applauded.

This bad news-good news rhythm should now be second nature to the life industry in regard to an OFC. And as every setback makes the prospect of success so much more tantalizing, the water seems more and more like nectar and the fruit positively ambrosial.

Once again I had the privilege of being a judge in the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education’s RealLIFEstories program. (To call it a ‘contest’ makes it seem a little too tawdry, although there is a definite competitive element involved.)

There a few things that bring you so close to the noble calling that so many long-time agents give as their reason for getting into-and even more important, continuing in-the life insurance selling business.

Having done this judging before, I was well aware that I needed to prepare myself for an emotional onslaught.  Most, if not all, of these stories are tear-jerkers in the best sense of the word.  They pack a wallop. 

I’m not going to go into particulars here, but you can always count of a number of the stories recounting early and unexpected deaths, with grieving families left behind to grieve, but also in much better condition to bear that grief because life insurance proceeds took care of immediate and long-term financial needs.

One other consistent factor in these stories is how often agents go above and beyond the selling of a policy.  Servicing the policy takes on a whole other meaning and dimension when you read about how involved some agents become in taking care of the survivors in the aftermath of a family’s tragedy.

(Just as an aside, I’d like to offer one bit of advice to any agent considering entering their own story: Presentation matters.  Just as life insurance doesn’t sell itself, but has to be sold, so it is with RealLIFEstories entries.  A well-told story creates much more resonance than a bare-bones accounting of what happened-thus upping its chances of being a winner.)

In any case, it is good to be reminded about the raison d’etre of life insurance and the good that it does.  In this sense, LIFE’s program has a very important mission within the business.

The 4 finalists in this year’s round of entries will (as is customary) be featured in a special section in Newsweek sometime in the early fall, bringing these stories to a wide swath of the public.  In addition, these stories will be available to agents to use in their own struggles to convince often reluctant clients to plunk down some premium dollars.

I know times are tough for many life insurers right now.  And I’ve heard that some companies are cutting back on their budgets for LIFE. This may be understandable under the circumstances, but it is also short-sighted. 

Agents don’t give up when the going gets tough, and neither should companies. In good times and bad, LIFE happens.