Bobby Samuelson

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#396 | Lincoln’s IUL Challenge

Full Article Lincoln’s history in Indexed UL is an interesting one. Lincoln was one of the first companies to introduce Indexed UL, starting with LifeElements in 2007. Since then, Lincoln has followed basically every fad or phase in Indexed UL…

#395 | Nationwide High Par 5

Full Article It’s been an interesting run for Nationwide New Heights IUL, which theoretically piggybacks on the massive success of Nationwide’s New Heights FIA and was built in partnership with Annexus. New Heights IUL was and continues to be identical…

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#394 | The Curious Case of the MassMutual 8 Pay

One of the most obvious impacts of the change to the Section 7702 interest rates implemented at the beginning of 2021 was the ability for life insurers to become quite a bit more targeted in their Whole Life product designs.…

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#393 | The Other IUL Market

Back in June of last year, I published #365 | The Other Whole Life Marketabout the stunning rise of Final Expense Whole Life, a non-participating policy sold with small face amounts and big commissions on a simplified underwriting platform to…

#392 | The Crown Jewel

2/13/24 Update - An astute reader shot me a note with a couple of additional comments with considering. First, he pointed out that many of the large independent BDs have insurance legacies. LPL was owned by Crown Life, Cetera was…

close up shot of a crown

#391 | The VUL Fund Divide

Over the past couple of weeks, both Penn Mutual and Prudential have released updated versions of their VUL policies. The changes to the policy charge structures themselves are minimal. Prudential increased both commissions and surrender charges on Custom Premier II.…

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#390 | Pacific Life Turns the Tide

This week, Pacific Life announced that it’s going to do something that it hasn’t done since February of 2011 – a cap increase for its legacy Indexed UL suite that dates all the way back to 2005. The previous increase…

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#389 | VUL & The Tax Cost Ratio

Full Article Life insurance is often – and often problematically – characterized as being “tax free.” That isn’t strictly true. The cash value itself is taxable upon sale. That’s consistent with other financial instruments. If you own a stock that…

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#388 | 2023 in Review

Looking back over a year’s worth of articles is always fun and gratifying. There were 44 articles published on The Life Product Review last year, pretty close to the one-per-week standard that I try to maintain, and all of them…

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#387 | Threading the Needle on 7702

This post was authored by Steve Cox at Life Innovators. In #357, “The Multi-Verse of 7702 Rates” (April 2023), we walked through the complicated steps required to sort out projected 7702 rates over the next couple of years. In the…

red thread in a needle
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