Month: March 2020
#212 | John Hancock Protection IUL 20
John Hancock’s nearly uninterrupted rise to prominence in the Indexed UL space has always been a two-front war: Protection IUL and Accumulation IUL. As is always the case with John Hancock, both products are fine-tuned for dominance in their particular…
#211 | The Emerging Credit Event
Although most of the attention in the media has focused on the impact of the response to COVID-19 on equities, the proper functioning and pricing of credit is far more important for life insurers. The last two weeks have seen…
#210 | The Opportunity in the Captastrophe
All indexed accounts may be created equally with general account yields and call options, but not all indexed account options are priced equally. Right now, there are screaming deals in non-cap indexed account options at life insurers that have been…
#209 | Global Atlantic Global Accumulator IUL
4/24/20 Update - Global Atlantic has reduced caps across the board, reducing Lifetime Builder Elite 2020's cap from 13.5% to 12.5% and Global Accumulator IUL's cap from 11.5% to 10.5%. The story and review below still apply. Global Atlantic has…
#208 | Taking Stock of the TNX
Although the public and the media are completely fixated by COVID-19 and the dramatic oscillations of the equity markets, we insurance folks are watching a different metric – the 10 Year Treasury yield (TNX). Since February 20th, the S&P has…
James Christie | Here We Go Again – With A Twist
The story currently playing out in the bond and equity markets seems eerily similar to what we saw in 2008 and 2009. Significant volatility in the equity markets combined with declining interest rates and rate actions by the Fed. In…
#207 | Indexed UL’s Honeymoon Decade
I was recently copied on an email chain amongst a bunch of high-end agents and industry commentators including a prominent, long-time and relentlessly self-promoting Indexed UL advocate. Most of the folks on the email chain are generally skeptical of Indexed…
#206 | A Practitioner’s Guide to Picking Product
Since the inception of our industry, we have been bedeviled by the question of whether or not life insurance is a commodity. It is a question core to what we do and why we exist. If life insurance is a…
