Latest Content
#448 | The End of the Road for PHL Variable
If a life insurance company is going to descend, then the way that it should descend is slow and steady. Unfortunately, that’s not usually how things go. Instead, the decline of a life insurer usually follows a very different pattern…
#447 | 7702 Rate Update for 2025
We’ve spilled a fair amount of ink on 7702 rates since the rate regime changed in 2021, starting with #257 | The Section 7702 Christmas Miracle. Symetra was the first carrier to incorporate the new rates into illustrations, which we…
#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…
#445 | Making the Market for Life Insurance
Full Article For as long as I’ve been in the life insurance industry, there has been persistent chatter about the life insurance “need-gap” reported by the annual LIMRA/Life Happens Insurance Barometer Study. The need-gap “represents the total level of self-reported…
#444 | Protective and the Third Way in Variable UL
The new business franchise at Protective occupies a distinct corner of the life insurance market. Whereas most insurers over the past decade have shifted hard towards accumulation sales, Protective lives up to its name by remaining stubbornly focused on protection-oriented…
#443 | Busch v Pacific Life
Image: AP It’s been a very long time since anything related to life insurance has broken into mainstream media. Larry King famously claimed to be scammed by a STOLI transaction that had been executed with his approval and paid him…
#442 | A New Era for Blending at Pacific Life
10/29/2025 Update - Last night, two-time NASCAR Cup Champion Kyle Busch and his wife Samantha Busch announced that they were suing Pacific Life over an $8.5 million loss in an Indexed UL policy. The complaint, which is now public, makes…
#441 | F&G and The Insurance Origination Model
What’s a life insurance company? We’ve asked this question a few times in The Life Product Review because the answer isn’t as clear-cut as it might seem. Life insurers exist on a spectrum. At one end sits the classic, true-blue…
#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…
#439 | The VA-ization of Prudential VUL Protector
One of the mysterious things about the persistent rise of the Guaranteed VUL market has been the simultaneous decline in the market for Variable Annuities with Living Benefits (VALB). The peak of the VALB market was in 2007 and it…
