Life insurance is an extremely powerful financial tool when used appropriately. Often we find, however, that it is not optimally owned – a potentially costly error. Also, we find that the beneficiaries or contingent beneficiaries may not be the most appropriate, or that no contingent beneficiaries are named. By naming contingent beneficiaries, postmortem planning opportunities become available that would otherwise be foreclosed at your death.
Commonly, life insurance is thought of as a financial tool used for creating assets to provide income replacement, and certainly, that is an important and valid use. There are other important and valid uses requiring knowledge and sophistication beyond the basics. For example, because life insurance enjoys special and unique tax treatment, it can also be used as an accumulation vehicle. Nevertheless, it only makes sense for that purpose under certain circumstances.
There are appropriate
applications for life insurance that integrate with sophisticated
estate planning. In order to implement a highly effective strategy, thorough analyses and projections should be performed, including tax projections and internal rate-of-return calculations. Our analyses have uncovered mistakes and oversights which would have been enormously costly to our clients and their families had corrective actions not been taken.
While our analyses consider the short-term needs for life insurance, we factor in how it can best be used to accomplish long-term, and often multigenerational, objectives. It is difficult for most people to think in those terms without engaging in discussion with professionals possessing first-hand knowledge and understanding of these areas. With that knowledge we utilize advanced financial modeling to see the likely and possible eventualities of various alternatives and to quantify their financial impact, weighing the side effects and trade-offs, so you can take the most appropriate action.
Our affiliation as a Member Firm with ValMark Securities, Inc. provides us with powerful and important capabilities that may be hard to find elsewhere. Our in-house team of professional underwriters empowers us to privately evaluate our clients’ medical risks before sending any information to a life insurance company. This process creates tremendous leverage to negotiate underwriting offers on behalf of our clients while protecting their identity and insurability.
The importance of favorable underwriting and the custom design of the right product backed by the right company cannot be overstated.
Transferring Other Risks
For many of our clients, we provide advice and design strategies around transferring the risk of becoming disabled during your working years. We also design strategies to help people transfer the financial risks associated with a Long Term Care (LTC) need.
Studies have shown that the risk of a person suffering a disability, limiting their ability to earn income, is higher than the risk of dying prematurely during their working years (Source: Council for Disability Awareness). Also, most people have become aware of the alarming statistics illustrating the risks and costs of a LTC need.
Additional Resources:
5 Roles of Life Insurance in Wealth Preservation
Private Underwriting Evaluation for Our High Net Worth Clients