Brandon Roberts 
The Insurance Pro Blog is now 10 years old. It was July 2011 when I sat down and officially launched the site, which was an idea I had rolling around in my head for a couple of years. While I do find the practice of celebrating certain anniversaries most likely tied to the basis of …
Since its inception, agents, marketing organizations, and even some general consumers have obsessed over the “average” interest credit assumed when projection indexed universal life insurance values. At one time, insurers used various “look back” periods–typically the one that showed their products in the best light–and regulators allowed these insurers to use whatever the average index …
In the interest of building newer and sexier ways to lure you into buying life insurance, agents and marketing organizations think it would be super nifty if you harnessed the extra buying power of a bank’s money to make the policy you can buy even bigger! The idea looks something like this, buying more life …
As insurance companies roll out new whole life products, we noticed a trend of these new products lacking slightly compared to their older counterparts. Certain features either disappeared or became less generous, and with continued low interest rates, some worried that whole life insurance would struggle to compete against other savings and investment choices. We …
Last week, the Federal Reserve acknowledged that inflation appears to be a bigger concern than originally assumed. The Fed also made clear its tentative plans to pull back on interest rate easing sooner than planned. This means interest rates will likely trend higher in the near-ish future, which could be good news for life insurers. …
Next up in our series of reviewing real-life results from whole life insurance policies, we look this week at Ohio National. Like other policies reviewed, we took data from an Ohio National whole life policy purchased around 10 years ago. We have the original illustration and used that to compare against current policy values. We also …
The latest installment in our series of reviewing real-life results from whole life insurance policies, we look this week at Penn Mutual. Similar to other policies reviewed, we took data from a Penn Mutual whole life policy purchased around 10 years ago. We have the original illustration and used that to compare against current policy values. …
When it comes to the many options you have to prepare for retirement, the list can sometimes appear a bit intimidating. You might also notice that among the option, there’s very little uniqueness and they all tend to involve much of the same risks and rewards. While there are variances to the outright risk of …
When buying a whole life policy it’s understandable that people want to try and assess how the policy values will perform over the next several years. The illustration provides a projection of values based on the current dividend, which we know will almost certainly be wrong. Other methods used to gain insight on how insurer’s …
When buying whole life insurance, it’s tempting to want to figure out all the ways to optimize the policy. I don’t just mean the foundational stuff like blending the policy and making heavy use of paid-up additions–but also the bigger picture stuff like “when should I take a loan,” “what’s the best amount to put …
