Commentary
#275 | Permanent Insurance Goes Direct(ish)
If you were to just read the industry headlines, you’d think that the only revolution happening right now in the life insurance space is the explosion in growth and investment in online insurance marketing firms. That’s why I wrote last…
#274 | The Online Life Insurance Gamble
Last week, the insurance world was rocked by news that Ethos Life had secured an additional $200 million in funding at a whopping $2 billion valuation, placing the firm at roughly half the size of Brighthouse Financial, two-thirds the size…
#268 | Constellation Buys Ohio National
A few days ago, Ohio National announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Constellation Insurance Holdings, a de-novo insurance holding company without even a website that is owned by two Canadian pension plans. The transaction is styled as…
#265 | A Strategic Review at Principal
Last week, Principal announced that it is “initiating a strategic review of its business mix, capital management and capital deployment options” as a result of activist fund Elliott Management taking a 10% stake in the company. Immediately – and understandably…
#263 | 7702 Update – Symetra Moves First
Nearly 2 months after the fact, we finally have our first retail product illustrations that reflect the new 7702-2% (as opposed to the old, 7702-4%) rates. The results are in-line with what I wrote about in previous articles, but I…
#262 | Inflation & Life Insurance
The picture for this post is a meme that has apparently been floating around the Reddit forums that have been instigating the surges in trading and prices of stocks, digital currencies and other commodities. Usually it’s accompanied by the caption…
#259 | Section 7702 Q&A
The Section 7702 Christmas Miracle Update It’s been a whirlwind start to the year for the life insurance industry. Since publishing The Section 7702 Christmas Miracle on January 5th, it has amassed an unbelievable 16,000 reads – a testament to…
#257 | The Section 7702 Christmas Miracle
This is the closest thing to breaking news in our industry and, as such, it’s still very much evolving. Current updates to the post are at the very bottom. For all of the buzz and lead-up to the creation and…
#256 | Symetra’s Gambit – Follow Up
In late 2013, just before I closed down the first iteration of The Life Product Review and joined MetLife, I wrote an article entitled Symetra’s Gambit. The crux of the article was that Symetra was carving out marketshare by offering…
#253 | The End of the Asset Management Era
The typical narrative in the life insurance business is that falling interest rates are an unmitigated disaster for life insurance companies resulting in spread compression, unsupportable guarantees, expense pressure and general malaise. There’s certainly truth in the narrative – and…
