Product Analytics
#440 | The Curious Case of the 4.5% Whole Life
In the immediate aftermath of the changes to Section 7702 that were enacted in early 2021, the story was – understandably – entirely focused on the fact that Section 7702 rates were allowed to drop below 4% for the first…
#437 | Making the Case for Juvenile Policies
When I graduated from college, I was given a participating Principal Whole Life policy. Entirely unbeknownst to me, my grandfather took it out when I was in the single-digits and had been paying the premiums on it ever since. It…
#434 | The Other Kind of Disability Insurance
The very first article in The Life Product Review was, ironically, not about life insurance at all. It was entitled “Insurance as Savings” and I published it in early 2012, not long after I’d bought my first disability insurance policy.…
#433 | The Best Indexed UL
Introduction Ever since I started speaking consistently about Indexed UL back in 2008, I’ve been asked the same question at least once every couple of months – if you were buying an Indexed UL product right now, which one would…
#427 | Domestic Bias in Indexed UL
Performance in any index-linked insurance contract is driven by two things – index performance and index participation. The vast majority of crediting strategies in Indexed UL are linked to the S&P 500 and for good reason. It’s a simple, straightforward,…
#426 | Indexed UL on the Efficient Frontier
Back in early 2019, I wrote a 3-part series entitled Indexed UL on the Risk Spectrum (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) that argued that by every metric, Indexed UL is a relatively low risk, low return proposition more akin…
#413 | The Option Tenor Conundrum
Author’s Note – Conundrum is the right term for this topic. Any time I write an article about option pricing, I feel acutely aware of the fact that most people who subscribe to this newsletter didn’t sign up to read…
#410 | The Challenge of Final Expense
Credit: Warner Bros The more I’ve come to understand Final Expense insurance, the more I’ve come to see it as something separate and distinct from what people commonly understand to be life insurance. Final Expense is better described as a…
#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…
