Life Insurance Planning

We’re not just about long term care insurance! Let us help you help your clients with their life insurance planning, the same way we’ve been able to help with long-term care insurance. We offer a strong variety of products from top-rated carriers, and a dedicated support team (including an in-house underwriter) to back it up. Having trouble finding just the right carrier or product for your client? Let us put our expertise to work for you.

The main purpose of life insurance is to mitigate the financial impact of the loss of a loved one who, during lifetime, provides income from an occupation, etc., or homemaker, childcare or other services in the home which would need to be provided if that person dies.  Life insurance is also used to extinguish debt at death, pay final expenses and so forth.

There are 2 main types of life insurance – term and permanent.

Term life insurance comes in several forms, from annually renewable term where coverage is renewed each year at an increasing premium based on the person’s then-attained age to, more commonly, level term, where coverage is purchased for a set period of time – 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 years – and the premium remains level and guaranteed for that set time frame.

Term insurance generally does not build cash value and is akin to “renting” life insurance.  At any given point in time, term insurance carries the least expensive premium for a particular amount of death benefit.

Permanent life insurance comes in several forms as well and, predominantly, in 2 types – fixed and variable.  One type of the fixed form of permanent life insurance is whole life, where (generally) the premiums and death benefits are fixed and cannot be periodically changed.  Whole life typically earns dividends which are then reflected in the policy’s increasing cash value and net death benefit amount.  Cash values may be withdrawn or loaned from the policy.  Newer design features including riders in whole life have provided for more flexibility than historically seen in whole life insurance.

Universal life insurance is another permanent type of life insurance, but it differs from whole life in that the premiums and death benefit amounts are more flexible and can be changed to suit the policyholder’s ongoing needs.  The initial design of the policy can be set up to maximize the amount of death benefit for a given amount of premium, or to intentionally depress the amount of death benefit to maximize the amount of cash value in a particular policy, or a blend of both.  Future premiums and death benefits can be changed – within certain regulatory guidelines – to suit future needs.

Where the fixed forms of permanent life insurance generally rely on changes to the ongoing interest rate environment (cash values generally reflect performance of an insurance carrier’s general account, which has a high concentration in bond investments), variable life insurance (usually the universal life type) cash values generally rely on the performance of underlying subaccounts, which may reflect the stock or bond markets, etc..

Since both whole life and universal life allow for the build up of cash value – often with significant tax advantages – permanent life insurance is more akin to “owning” life insurance.  Permanent life insurance generally carries a much higher initial premium than term insurance.  However, over time, the net cost of permanent life insurance can actually be far lower than term insurance.

Let us show you why so many producers have chosen to make us their home for their clients’ Life and Disability Income Insurance needs, along with their long term care insurance planning needs. Call one of our Life team members today!