News
#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…
#239 | Filed: PacLife PDX Class Action Lawsuit
I've uploaded the lawsuit and you can read it by clicking here. While working at MetLife, I was struck by how often the notion of “ending up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal” was invoked as a…
#225 | Making Sense of MassMutual’s Whole Life Price Increase
A couple of weeks ago, MassMutual announced that it would be increasing premiums on its Legacy 10 and Legacy 12 Pay products by about 10%, on average. The announcement went on to say that: Guaranteed cash values will not changeIllustrated…
#197 | PacLife Lowers Caps and Increases Illustrated Rates
I admit – this title is somewhat misleading. Yes, Pacific Life dropped caps across all of its Indexed UL products, but it only raised the illustrated rate for one particular account option in an indexed crediting account of its new…
#194 | 2020 Whole Life Dividend Rate Recap
‘Tis the season for the much-anticipated, much-speculated, much-hyped dividend interest rate announcements from mutual companies. The headline is that not a whole lot happened this year in terms of dividend rate changes. New York Life, Northwestern Mutual and PennMutual held…
#193 | Nationwide’s Cap Change
Last week, Nationwide announced that it would be dropping caps on many of the S&P 500 accounts in its street Indexed UL products both past and present, including the standard point-to-point capped accounts that determine the illustrated rates for its…
#171 | Lincoln Files Guaranteed UL Buyout Offers
A little over a year ago, ITM/21st reported that Lincoln Financial was making buyout offers to Survivorship Guaranteed UL policyholders in the form of an Enhanced Cash Surrender Value. Later that year, the Life Insurance Settlement Association (LISA) challenged the…
#165 | Indexed UL Class Action Lawsuit Investigation
In the last few days, a link to a posting on topclassactions.com has been blazing through the industry like wildfire. The headline specifically references a class action lawsuit investigation trying to find (and presumably sign up) Pacific Life PDX and…
#161 | PacLife Reduces Surplus Premium Load
A couple of weeks ago, PacLife reduced the Surplus Premium Load on its Indexed UL products from 13% to 6%. This might seem like something of an innocuous change, but it’s not. The Surplus Premium Load (SPL, let’s say) was…
#158 | Life Insurance in the Los Angeles Times
When the life insurance industry gets press, which is quite rare, it’s usually bad press. In this case, the bad press was more than justified. Take a look: https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-register-insurance-20190219-story.html. Obviously, there are many factors at play in the case of…
