Product Analytics
#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…
#236 | The Inevitable Rise of Structured Crediting
Where is the Indexed UL market going? If you really want to know, as usual, you have to look outside of life insurance and towards annuities. Since AXA (now Equitable) created the Structured Annuity in 2010, the market has grown…
#230 | Breaking Down Whole Life Dividends
This was a presentation I gave for the advisor coaching program put together by my good friend Joe Pombriant of Alacrity Financial. He graciously gave me the recording of the webinar to post on the site (he's a subscriber). His…
#227 | The New Pressure on Caps
It should come as little surprise that rates and caps continue to fall in Indexed UL products. Just one look at the IUL Benchmark Index will tell you why – caps are expensive (4.9% for a 10% cap) and yields…
