Product Analytics

#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…

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#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…

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#406 | American National Signature Protection IUL

What happens after a private equity firm buys a life insurer? The first order of business almost always seems to be to reallocate the life insurer’s general account to align with the new owner’s investment expertise. That’s the low-hanging fruit.…

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#402 | The Long Tail of Portfolio Yields

Ever since interest rates started to increase in 2022, there has been much speculation about how long it would take to see material increases in carrier portfolio yields. The simple answer is that life insurers have an average maturity in…

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#396 | Lincoln’s IUL Challenge

Full Article Lincoln’s history in Indexed UL is an interesting one. Lincoln was one of the first companies to introduce Indexed UL, starting with LifeElements in 2007. Since then, Lincoln has followed basically every fad or phase in Indexed UL…

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#391 | The VUL Fund Divide

Over the past couple of weeks, both Penn Mutual and Prudential have released updated versions of their VUL policies. The changes to the policy charge structures themselves are minimal. Prudential increased both commissions and surrender charges on Custom Premier II.…

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#390 | Pacific Life Turns the Tide

This week, Pacific Life announced that it’s going to do something that it hasn’t done since February of 2011 – a cap increase for its legacy Indexed UL suite that dates all the way back to 2005. The previous increase…

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#386 | A Shift in Guaranteed VUL

What’s the difference between a Guaranteed UL and a Guaranteed VUL? In theory, the only difference should be that GUL credits a fixed rate to cash values and GVUL provides for the ability to invest cash values in mutual funds…

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#385 | Proof, Pudding

I’ve decided to make this article free for everyone, but you’ll note that it’s #385 – which means that there are 384 other articles on the site that are available only to subscribers. This one is par for the course…

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