Product Analytics
#291 | Rethinking IUL Renewal Caps
One of the most common criticisms of Indexed UL is that it’s the ultimate “trust me” product. No other product relies on as many opaque or complex assumptions as Indexed UL for both its real-world and illustrated performance. Like any…
#288 | Private Placement Goes Mainstream
Over the last couple of weeks, Private Placement Life Insurance (PPLI) has gotten more attention from mainstream media than it ever has before. Bloomberg ran a click-bait article on September 2nd entitled “How Rich Americans Plan to Escape Biden Tax…
#283 | The Scourge of Conversion-Only Products
I’ve argued before that a guaranteed conversion privilege is the most mathematically valuable part of a Term insurance policy – yes, even more so than the death benefit coverage itself. The chance that you’re going to die while being covered…
#281 | Portfolio Rates & Life Insurance
In his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace told a story that has since been cemented as an iconic parable in American culture. It goes like this: “There are these two young fish swimming along and they…
#273 | The New IUL Illustration War
Indexed UL is besieged by falling caps that imperil the core story of the product and the ways that it has traditionally been sold. What's the solution? In the same way that life insurers previously changed the identity of the…
#271 | Cracks Emerge in the Guaranteed VUL Market
If you want to see what’s going to happen with Guaranteed VUL, look no further than what’s already happened with Guaranteed UL. T.S. Eliot famously wrote that “this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a…
#267 | The Rise of the Reverse Blend
Now that the dust is starting to settle on 7702-2%, one thing is becoming abundantly clear – compensation is a real challenge, both for agents and life insurers. As I’ve written about in previous articles, the simple math for compensation…
#260 | The Hang Seng & Indexed Account Availability
Last week, Pacific Life announced that it is “pausing” allocations to its 1-Year International Indexed Account until “further notice” due to an executive order issued last year “prohibiting transactions in securities and derivatives of certain Chinese Companies.” As a result,…
#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…
#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…
