Bobby Samuelson
#409 | Who Killed Columbian?
About 3 weeks ago, the New York Department of Financial Services moved to place Columbian Mutual Life Insurance Company into rehabilitation. Crucially, the petition to rehabilitate Columbian Mutual did not include a moratorium that blocks the ability for policyholders to…
#408 | Reliastar Raises Base Charges
8/27/24 Update - I just received an email from a subscriber about another Reliastar policy with charge increases, this time affecting both the base charges as described below in this policy and the premium load, which jumped from 0% to…
#407 | Beyond Term
If you were to put any random person in our industry up on stage and ask them to start explaining life insurance, they’d probably start by explaining the difference between Term and permanent insurance. Dividing the life insurance world into…
#406 | American National Signature Protection IUL
What happens after a private equity firm buys a life insurer? The first order of business almost always seems to be to reallocate the life insurer’s general account to align with the new owner’s investment expertise. That’s the low-hanging fruit.…
#405 | Lincoln VULone and the End of an Era
In the pre-dawn hours of October 31st, 2018, you would have found me sitting in my chair with my computer in my lap writing an article about Voya formally ceasing to write new life insurance business at the end of…
#404 | Who Killed PHL Variable?
Introduction I have to start this article with an admission. When I first saw the news about PHL Variable Insurance Company (PHLVIC) being put under administration and then rehabilitation by the State of Connecticut, I didn’t think much of it.…
#403 | The Double Edged Sword – Assets
Writing insurance is a double-edged sword. One side of the blade are the risks covered by the insurance policies themselves – the liability structure. The other side of the blade are the assets that support those liabilities. Successfully managing an…
#402 | The Long Tail of Portfolio Yields
Ever since interest rates started to increase in 2022, there has been much speculation about how long it would take to see material increases in carrier portfolio yields. The simple answer is that life insurers have an average maturity in…
#401 | Assurance IQ and the End of an Era
Prudential’s first quarter earnings release held a simultaneously shocking and yet completely predictable announcement – Assurance IQ is being formally shut down. It’s completely predictable because Prudential had already booked hundreds of millions in operating losses on Assurance IQ, pivoted…
#400 | MassMutual Apex VUL
When MassMutual rolled out Apex VUL in 2021, the name was unintentionally ironic. If you’re going to roll out a product and call it “apex,” it better be good. Apex isn’t an aspirational term. It’s a descriptor. A product called…
