Brantley Whitley

Did you know that if you are over 70, and need life insurance, you may be asked to perform a memory test?  Or if you prefer to use fancy life insurance company wording, a cognitive impairment test.

This sort of testing has not been around that long, in fact, it's a relatively new kink in the life insurance underwriting rope.  Keep reading and we're going to share a real-life example with you that will elicit a raised eyebrow at the very least.

Just recently, I had a new client I was working with that needed a permanent life insurance solution for reasons that are laid out in the proceeding paragraphs.

For sake of protecting the privacy of the innocent, let’s call him–Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith is in his early 70's, 73 to be exact. He has a pension from working in a federal government position and had chosen (years before I ever met him) at his retirement to receive a “life only” pension payout settlement option.

Choosing the single-life option is very common among civil service employees, retired teachers, and union employees to name a few.

Why?

Pretty simple actually.

If you are searching for the right life insurance policy to generated cash value quickly or even immediately, you will have a couple of different options. But you should be aware that more important than the type of policy—whole life insurance or universal life insurance are going to be the two types—you need to know that policy design and funding will have the greatest impact.

You can purchase the right type of policy and not achieve the desired outcome of growing cash value immediately. The details very much matter when setting up your life insurance policy for the purpose of rapidly building cash value.

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In spite of all the chaos that 2020 has brought to the table and the ensuing shift to most people doing business in a virtual world, there are still many people searching and wondering if they should work with an independent life insurance agent that lives close by. There are some people that really like to have a face-to-face, in-person experience with their life insurance agent. We get that and we always enjoy meeting our clients in person when possible.

But since 2011, we've used the internet to reach people in a way not possible a few decades ago.  We started doing this for two reasons:

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If you have ever applied for life insurance in the past, you probably remember having someone come out to your home or office to ask you intrusive medical questions, take blood and a urine sample. But nowadays, you can actually get a no exam life insurance policy or non-medical life insurance policy. Different names for the same thing.

You will typically pay a bit more for your coverage than you would if you went through the hassle of subjecting yourself to a full paramedical exam. But for most people, the prospect of having an examiner come into their home or office to take some blood, a urine specimen, and ask a ton of invasive questions is a deal-breaker.  And I completely understand.

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Pension maximization refers to a specific retirement planning technique that can be used by couples to weigh possible pension payout options. You can also consider these options to be annuitization options as they are quite similar to what you will find in a single premium immediate annuity, like the ones I referred to in this article on creating your own pension.

So you've been slaving away for the past 30 years at your post and now that day is in plain sight.  What day is that?

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Some life insurance policies use a portion of the premium you pay to build cash value–specifically, whole life insurance all types of universal life insurance (current assumption, variable, and indexed).

Technically speaking, this cash value exists by insurance regulation to provide policy owners with a nonforfeiture benefit.  However, if you own one of these cash building forms of life insurance, you do not need to cancel or irrevocably alter the policy to use the accumulated cash value.

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