Bobby Samuelson
#249 | AIG Exits Life & Retirement
Yesterday, AIG announced that it has made the strategic decision to exit its Life & Retirement division in order to create two distinct “market-leading” companies with AIG itself focusing exclusively on its P&C business. The details of the separation have…
#248 | The Price of a Term Conversion
When I have conversations with folks about term insurance, I always focus on term providing two distinct benefits – mortality protection and insurability protection. Mortality protection is the death benefit. That’s the low-cost, efficient and commoditized portion. Insurability protection is…
#247 | AG 49-A & Product Development
This article was originally intended to be published in a publication for actuaries. Trying to make Indexed UL illustrations work within the Illustration Model Regulation is like trying to get a Sumo wrestler to do ballet. It’s possible, but not…
#246 | The Architect Fallacy
Years ago, I was invited as a guest to a meeting of a distributor’s top agents to decide how to message the role of an insurance agent. The group was naturally drawn to the concept of the life insurance agent…
#245 | AG 49-A and PacLife PDX 2
Pacific Life has been at the center of the controversy surrounding leveraged Indexed UL products, whether they particularly meant to be or not. The original PDX might have had copious amounts of complexity and illustrated leverage and thrown fuel onto…
#244 | AG 49-A & John Hancock Accumulation IUL 20
Slowly but surely, the AG 49-A landscape is beginning to show itself and a few things are becoming very clear. The illustration restrictions introduced by AG 49-A certainly have teeth. Multipliers and buy-up caps have reduced performance relative to AG…
#243 | Rethinking Whole Life Dividends
One of the things I’ve been hearing a lot recently, especially from folks on the independent side of the business, is some variant of the argument that low interest rates are going to crush dividend scale interest rates (DSIRs) on…
#242 | Prudential Files a VUL Protector Reprice
At the end of a recent 4-part article series on the two products with a duopoly on the Guaranteed VUL category, Lincoln VULone and Prudential VUL Protector, I wrote the following about Prudential’s product – “sell the daylights out of…
#241 | The Premium Financing Exit Mirage
Indexed UL has undoubtedly ushered in a new era of hyper-aggressive premium financing deals and the reasons why aren’t hard to figure out. Indexed UL allows for illustrated rates based on hypothetical historical lookbacks and the maximum rate is the…
#240 | Assessing Sequence of Return Risk – Part 1
Everyone knows that variability of returns in both Variable UL and Indexed UL creates sequence of return risk, but what exactly does that mean and how does it actually translate into policy performance? As it turns out, sequence of return…
