U.S. individual disability insurance premium reached $5.6 billion in 2025, the latest reading from Gen Re’s annual market survey. More than 285,000 new individual disability policies issued during the year, with total sales premium up 2.7 percent over 2024. Independent buyers and the brokers who serve them drove the growth.
Most of that growth came from individual coverage, the product line that practice owners and other self-employed professionals buy because group disability through an employer is not available to them. The 2.7 percent year-over-year increase in U.S. individual disability sales continues a multi-year pattern of steady expansion, even as the workplace disability market posts a different story.
A practice owner shopping for disability insurance for business owners joins a buyer pool that added more than a quarter-million policies last year. The shape of that pool matters for the owner’s underwriting and pricing options.
Gen Re’s annual survey is the most detailed view of the U.S. individual disability market published each year. The firm collects data from the carriers that write the bulk of new individual policies and reports the totals across product lines, benefit levels, and policy counts. The $5.6 billion in-force figure reflects all premium currently being paid on individual disability policies in force, including policies issued in prior years. The 285,000 new policies is the 2025 issuance specifically.
The 2.7 percent growth in sales is the rate that matters for carrier capacity planning, broker recruitment, and the pace of new entrants into the market. Steady growth signals a market that is absorbing buyers at a pace carriers can underwrite without straining their pricing models.
The 2.7 percent figure for 2025 sits below the multi-year pattern. Gen Re data through the 2018 to 2024 stretch showed individual disability premium growing at an average annual rate near 6 percent. The slower 2025 reading does not reverse the trajectory. It does mark a deceleration that brokers and carriers should read carefully. Slower premium growth in a market that historically grew faster signals either pricing softness, slower buyer acquisition, or both.
Non-Cancellable Policies Dominate the Individual Disability Market
Non-Cancellable disability income insurance has historically carried the largest share of new sales premium in the individual market. In the most recent breakdown Gen Re published before the 2025 figures, Non-Cancellable accounted for 84 percent of new sales premium in 2023, with Guaranteed Renewable at 15 percent and Buy-Sell at less than 1 percent of premium but 39 percent of total new benefit amounts.
The dominance of Non-Cancellable matters for practice owners. A Non-Cancellable policy locks the premium rate and the benefit terms for the life of the contract, which is the structure most professional buyers want. An owner who buys a Non-Cancellable policy at 38 carries the same premium and the same benefit definitions at 58, regardless of what happens to the carrier’s pricing models in the intervening years.
The continued growth of the Non-Cancellable line signals that buyers are choosing the more expensive, more protective option over the cheaper Guaranteed Renewable alternative. Brokers who place individual disability coverage report that buyers in healthcare, dental, legal, and consulting professions specifically request Non-Cancellable terms when they understand the difference.
Practice Owners and Self-Employed Professionals Anchor the Buyer Mix
The 285,000 new individual policies in 2025 came from a buyer mix that skews toward independent professionals. Physicians, dentists, attorneys, veterinarians, consultants, and other practice owners are the largest single category of individual disability buyers because their work is not covered by employer-sponsored group plans. They buy individual coverage because nothing else is available to them.
Within that buyer mix, multi-owner practices add a second layer of coverage that solo practitioners do not. A partnership of three or four physicians or attorneys typically buys individual disability coverage for each partner and may add Buy-Sell coverage that funds a partnership buyout if any one partner becomes disabled. The compounding effect on premium volume is part of what drives the year-over-year growth in Gen Re’s totals.
For a practice owner reading the Gen Re data today, the growth signal carries information beyond the headline number. The 2.7 percent annual increase in sales premium is happening across a buyer pool dominated by independent professionals making the same coverage decisions the reader is making.
The growth is also happening in a market where carriers compete on the specific terms of the policy. Definitions, benefit periods, and rider availability vary across Guardian, Principal, MassMutual, The Standard, and Ameritas, and the variation matters at claim time. Buyers entering the market in 2025 have more carrier options and more underwriting precedent than buyers entering the market five years earlier.
The Gen Re 2025 totals do not name the carriers driving the growth or the geographies where it concentrated. The directional signal is what the data conveys: practice owners and other independent professionals continue to buy individual disability insurance at a pace that adds quarter-million-plus policies per year and lifts total in-force premium past $5.6 billion. The buyers shopping for coverage today are entering a market the size of the data above describes.
The next twelve months of new individual disability sales will test whether the 2.7 percent reading was a one-year deceleration or the start of a slower growth cycle. The carriers tracked by Gen Re will report quarterly through the year, and the brokers who place individual disability policies will know first whether the buyer pace is holding or softening. For an owner deciding when to buy, the slower-growth signal is not a reason to wait. It is a reason to lock in terms while carrier competition still favors the buyer.