Last year, Ohio National Life announced that it was looking to demutualize and be acquired by a Canadian Private Equity-created insurance holdings company named Constellation Insurance Holdings. While we didn’t predict demutualization was on the table for Ohio National, we weren’t surprised by the announcement. The company struggled for a few years, and those struggles …
We sell life insurance to a variety of people for a handful of reasons, and today I want to highlight one of the common themes involved when someone approaches us about a life insurance purchase. To be sure, there are several reasons why someone might want to buy life insurance. And when it comes to …
The internet is rife with hot tips on how to beat inflation. Since a lot of supposed financial media outlets compete with each other for top billing on Google, the majority of these articles are an incestuous party of underwhelming originality–or even actionability if I’m being wholly honest with you. The free-lancers who dabble in …
We’ve talked a good bit about how inflation might impact whole life insurance, but we’ve been much less vocal about how it might affect indexed universal life insurance. In theory, the products operate in a similar world and so should face similar consequences. But… IUL may have some short-term advantages. Since the interest earnings are tied …
I own stocks. This shouldn’t be a big revelation to anyone. I think I’ve been pretty transparent about my beliefs that whole life insurance and indexed universal life insurance are complements–not replacements–to equities. Some–a lot actually–of my personal stock picking would likely be deemed a tad exotic–high risk for sure. And it’s worked out pretty …
Cash-value life insurance–e.g. whole life and indexed universal life insurance–offers the policy owner the option to use policy values while he/she is still alive. There are a few ways to go about this, but today I want to talk about the loan feature. Taking a loan against a life insurance policy is one of the …
We don’t spend enough time talking about annuities. It’s true. We know it. We occasionally talk about it–Brantley and I. We even make plans to do something about it. Then it gets lost in the bustle of life–forgotten until the next time we remember that we don’t talk enough about annuities. You’d think things would …
We’re now well over a year since the COVID-19 Pandemic began, and this means we now have some data that gives us some insights into how the Pandemic is affecting life insurers. Not surprisingly, when the Pandemic began, we saw ample hand-wringing among life insurance companies. Many of them quickly put strict restrictions in place …
Persistently low-interest rates leave more conservative investors in a tough position. While these people aren’t really keen on assuming a position in higher-risk assets, the returns achieved on fixed-interest options have been on a downward trend for more than a decade. Cash-value life insurance products do tend to compare very favorably as fixed-interest options, but …
The Fed made very clear this week its intentions to begin easing its long-standing practice of pumping money into the U.S. Economy. This means they are looking to push interest rates up on the broader economy–a day many of us have been awaiting. A lot of things will come with higher interest rates, but one …
