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 …
Retirement income planning is a complicated and–for many–an elusive task. Industries that exist to help everyday Americans prepare for retirement spend millions of dollars every year trying to craft flashier and fancier marketing hooks to convince would-be retirement preppers to entrust them with their hard-saved dollars. And well-meaning reporters churn out thousands of articles every …
The end of 2020 brought a major change to the life insurance industry. A last-minute change to legislation established a new–lower–guaranteed interest rate for cash value life insurance policies. The exact rules vary a bit depending on the insurance product, but the most notable change affected whole life policies because they would need an overhaul …
In 2020, something a bit unusual happened. Life insurers faced a huge expense that far exceeded expectations had you asked any stakeholder for his/her projection from the vantage point of 2019. This huge expense? A dramatic rise in death benefit claims. Yup, it’s true. 2020 saw a sharp–15.4% year-over-year increase to be exact–rise in death …
The rate of return one achieves on a cash value life insurance policy is sometimes hotly debated. This is especially true when opining on the adequacy of the rate of return. On the one hand, we have a crowd of people who think it’s paltry and represents a foolish financial move because–allegedly–you can do so …
A lot of people buy whole life insurance policies with the intention of one day stopping the premium payment. In some cases, these are guaranteed paid-up policies like a 10-Pay whole life product. In other cases, the policyholder uses non-guaranteed features of the policy to cover the premium. In others, a nonforfeiture option comes into …
Universal life insurance is in no short supply of anecdotes and claims that rising fees will destroy the product. Much of this discussion is skewed “data” used for self-interest pushing some alternative agenda. And while these stories exist in the 10’s of incidences–which should cause any reasonable person to question the validity of any claim …
