The Ultimate Guide to Whole Life Insurance Companies

a mostly complete list of whole life insurance companies that issue participating whole life insurance policies

Whole life insurance companies or life insurance companies that offer whole life insurance comprise a much smaller pool of insurers versus universal life insurance.  However, a lot of these companies have extraordinary capitalization and profitability.

Today we're going to detail the whose who among life insurers with whole life insurance products.  We're going to focus exclusively on “participating” whole life.  This means only companies with products that earn dividends made the list.

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Independent Life Insurance Broker Myth

what value do independent life insurance brokers have?

Being an independent life insurance broker sounds like a lot of fun.  You don't work for any specific company.  You have no quotas to worry about.  Instead, you work independently and make unbiased recommendations best suited for your clients.  You also don't have to attend boring sales meetings or attend company picnics.

With so many amazing perks, there's an obvious question begging to be asked.  Why doesn't everyone become an independent life insurance broker?  The answer is simple.  These supposed benefits don't really exist.

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Northwestern Mutual’s Dishonest Sales Tactic

Northwestern Mutual is a huge mutual life insurance company in the United States.  The company boasts an impressive policyholder count, an extremely large asset pool, and enviable profitability.  These stats alone are a good reason to stand up and take notice of the Quiet Company.

With all signs pointing to a well-capitalized and profitable insurance company, it's easy to assume that the insurance policies might just write themselves.  That, apparently, isn't the case.

Despite Northwestern Mutual's success, we find its sales agents sinking to new lows in their efforts to sell whole life insurance policies.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Life Insurance

life insurance advantages and disadvantages

Life insurance comes with great benefits and a few disadvantages.  For the average person out there looking to gain a better understanding of life insurance, we put together this list of the top three advantages and disadvantages.  We hope that it will help you navigate your own insurance purchase a little better.

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Life Insurance Ladder, Bogus Way to Save Money?

should you ladder your term life insurance?

The world of personal finance contains no shortage of tips and tricks.  Many seek out slick nuances to highlight some “cool”  idea that promises to  “save you a bundle.”  The life insurance ladder strategy is no exception–big promise with a small advantage.

Heralded by some as an often overlooked strategy for saving you thousands on term life insurance premiums over your lifetime, we focus on this idea today to explore whether or not it really holds any significance.

So will the ladder make you richer?  Maybe.

Does the potential for those riches come with the precariousness of too little life insurance?  Read on…doing so might save you more money than you ever imagined.

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What Happened to Single Premium Life Insurance?

why did single premium life insurance go away?

Single premium life insurance functions just like it sounds.  You pay one single premium and the policy remains in force forever.  In somewhat more technical insurance-speak, it only takes one premium to satisfy the paid-up requirement of the policy.

This sounds pretty cool at first glance.  You pay one premium and you can keep your death benefit forever and always with no need to make any additional premiums.  I can hear many of you shouting “sign me up!”  But if you go out hunting for this type of life insurance, you'll find it's a bit trickier to find than almost any other type of life insurance.  Why this is the case and what you can do given that fact is the focus of today's blog post.

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Whole Life Insurance Guarantees Improve Over Time

How is that the guarantees of whole life insurance actually get better over time?

Whole life insurance guarantees serve as a constant source for discussion about life insurance and other personal finance related matters.  Some might suggest that the whole life insurance guarantees are nothing special.  These guarantees represent a paltry return on your hard earned dollars.  Alternatively, some might suggest that these guarantees represent a rather remarkable offering from life insurance companies.

Regardless of your initial opinion of such guarantees, I'm going to spend a great deal of time today discussing why they are unique and exploring a very incredible function they serve for all policyholders.

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When Shopping for Life Insurance The Best Strategy Is to…

life insurance shopping should have a strategy depending on what you want the policy to do for you

When shopping for life insurance, the best strategy is first to understand your objective in buying life insurance and then focus on the products best suited to meet that goal.

This statement might sound a bit underwhelming or generic, but it has considerable nuanced implications that I want to spend time building out a bit.  I think you'll find that effort both insightful and helpful in your pursuits when in the market for life insurance, be it the first time or the umpteenth time.

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Paid-Up Universal Life Insurance?

Paid-Up Universal Life Insurance

One of the niftiest features of whole life insurance is the option to make it paid-up at any point in your lifetime.  The reduce paid-up feature for whole life allows you to electively stop paying premiums and guarantee the policy will never lapse so long as you are willing to accept a smaller death benefit on the policy than the one you currently have.  But what about paid-up universal life insurance?  Does this same feature exist for people who own universal life insurance?

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How We Evaluate Life Insurance Companies

evaluating life insurance companies may not be as simple as looking at their ratings

How to evaluate life insurance companies is a question that plagues both consumers and industry professionals.  Many companies love to market on ratings or a single financial metric at which they excel.

But highly rated life insurance companies are a dime a dozen and what financial attributes truly matter when it comes to crossing life insurance companies off your list.  I want to spend today discussing how we evaluate life insurance companies.

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