Excerpt from the 55th Annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning: Q&A with Larry Brody
Life insurance carriers are raising premiums on universal life products – many by substantial amounts. For a lot of policy owners, these cost of insurance (COI) increases come as a major (and unpleasant) surprise. While certain carriers have been raising rates at a relatively modest rate, others have ratcheted up their premiums by a drastic amount causing the policy to eat through any built-up cash value.
What is the big deal with big data? The overwhelming amount of data now available, and the progressively complicated technology that comes with it, have not only transformed our lives, but also the way industries function and compete. That can mean massive changes for the way advisors interact with their clients.
With over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created daily, the time has come to figure out how best to collect, process, and analyze this data to better serve clients.
Senior life insurance policy owners are rapidly lapsing or surrendering their policies for minimal value causing them to throw away decades of premiums.
One of the many questions that financial advisors often get about selling one’s life insurance has to do with the difference between viatical settlements and life settlements.
There’s a lot of confusion about these two transactions. To help clear up that confusion, here’s a brief explanation of viatical vs. life settlements. (more…)
Average life expectancy in the US took a drastic 1-year plunge during the first half of 2020 due to Covid-19. Historically, overall life expectancy has dropped only 3 times since 1860 attributable to the Civil War, the First World War, and the Spanish Flu epidemic. According to the CDC, heart disease and cancer have long been the leading causes of death in the United States and still hold the top 2 spots with 659,041 and 599,601 deaths respectively in 2020. Covid-19 is threatening to eclipse both of those numbers.
Making the shift from working life, to retirement life, can be a shock for even the most confident retirees. Even if you have saved your entire working life, financial stress can still creep up. Fortunately, there are many relatively easy ways that retirees - and near-retirees - can improve their finances.
Life insurance is one of the most valuable assets owned by consumers; however, it is also one of the most misunderstood when it comes to its present asset value. A life settlement is the sale of an existing life insurance policy (an asset) for an amount greater than the cash surrender value, and less than the death benefit. This timeline will demonstrate how life settlements have evolved from insurable interest abuses by less compliance-centric companies, to a valuable planning tool to help financial professionals and fiduciaries protect the best interest of the policy owner/seller.
What is a life settlement?
A life settlement is the sale of an existing life insurance policy to an institutional buyer for an amount greater than the cash surrender value and less than the death benefit. A life settlement provides a lucrative alternative to lapsing or surrendering the policy.
According to a research study from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, the rate of seniors facing bankruptcy has surged five-times-over since 1991. This spike exceeds the demographic shift for the aging population. The report analyzed data across states from bankruptcy court records and written questionnaires, revealing that about 12.2 percent of annual bankruptcy filings are from senior households.
