Product Analytics
#456 | VUL Illustration Variance
TLPR UpdateFirst, the bad news. Dan Austin is departing TLPR to re-join OneAmerica, where he previously worked, to take (re-take?) his dream job. I'm excited for him and wish him the best.Now, the great news. Kasey Gammons, formerly the Director…
#455 | The Puzzle of Older Age Pricing
How old is too old to buy life insurance? Most carriers will issue policies until at least age 80, but a handful will issue them all the way up to age 90. John Hancock and MassMutual will even issue Preferred…
#449 | A DIR Proof Point
AI was used to proof-read and cross-reference existing articles. No part of this article was written with the assistance of AI. There is probably no single metric as broadly misunderstood within the industry – and maligned outside of the industry…
#446 | The Express Underwriting Revolution
In the fall of 2013, I found myself at a conference and sitting through a presentation that I would usually have assiduously avoided – the future of underwriting, as seen through the lens of a consultant at Deloitte. The fact…
#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…
