Life Insurance
A popular misconception about life insurance, is that it’s something to do with ensuring others (your policy beneficiaries) enjoy the fruits of your insurance once you’ve passed. While that is just one aspect of planning for the inevitable, if executed properly, life insurance can offer multiple benefits – even as you live to enjoy them!
Why Life Insurance Is Important for Individuals & Families
Death benefits pay-out for survivors is only one aspect of life insurance. If the policy holder passes, the cash value of the policy can help young families meet their financial needs, or can even help pay off a mortgage. However, there are other facets of life insurance that are equally important.
Most life insurance products allow policy holders to tap into funds as the value of their policy grows over time. In case you are looking for tax-deferred gains, a life insurance policy offers that too, because you are only taxed once you withdraw the money from your policy. With the right life insurance strategy in place, your policy may act as a great source of tax-free wealth transfer to your beneficiaries.
In retirement, a well-planned life insurance strategy can serve to generate additional retirement income, or it might even provide additional living health care benefits in your old-age.
What We Can Do for You
Not every life insurance policy provides you all of these benefits. Our experienced Life Insurance Professionals will discuss your needs in detail, and then customize a life insurance strategy that helps meet those specific goals.
Some of the life insurance tools and products available to our financial professionals include:
- Term Life Insurance: If you have a specific time-horizon over which you need protection, then Term Life Insurance policies are definitely worth considering. These policies are designed to provide short to intermediate term coverage at an affordable cost. For instance, if you have young children whom you wish to provide for until they are older – say 15 to 20 years – or if you have an unpaid mortgage that you want your family to pay off in the event of your untimely passing, then a Term Life policy is worth considering.
- Permanent Life Insurance: Permanent life policies not only provide insurance protection for life, but are also a great way to grow the value of your policy. The enhanced cash value might then be tapped subsequently, to help meet future needs, such as funding college/university education of a child, or creating an additional retirement income stream.
- Participating (or Whole) Life Insurance: Depending on what your investment goals are, our insurance team might recommend a Participating Life Insurance product for you. With these products, the cash value and death benefit payout of your policy can experience tax-advantaged growth within the policy. You might also be eligible to borrow tax-free funds (for any purpose you might deem fit) against the cash value of your policy.
- Universal Life Insurance: If you are in search of higher savings and earnings potential from your life insurance policy, then a Universal Life Insurance might be what our professionals recommend. These policies also offer great flexibility, as the amount insured can be changed, and premiums can be adjusted (increased, deferred, decreased), while enabling policy-holders to also withdraw part of the cash value of the policy.
- Variable Life Insurance: If you are someone looking to leverage stock market-like performance through your insurance policy, then a Variable Life Insurance product might be what you need. They provide policy-holders the option to invest the fixed option of the cash value of their insurance policy in a host of stocks, bonds, money-market funds and other investment products. Our financial professionals will make you aware of the all the risks and opportunities associated with a variable insurance product.
Contact us today to learn more about life insurance.
The cost and availability of life insurance depend on factors such as age, health, and the type and amount of insurance purchased. Before implementing a strategy involving life insurance, it would be prudent to make sure that you are insurable by having the policy approved. As with most financial decisions, there are expenses associated with the purchase of life insurance. Policies commonly have mortality and expense charges. In addition, if a policy is surrendered prematurely, there may be surrender charges and income tax implications. The use of cash value life insurance to provide a resource for retirement or something else assumes that there is first a need for the death benefit protection. The ability of a life insurance contract to accumulate sufficient cash value to help meet accumulation goals will be dependent upon the amount of extra premium paid into the policy, and the performance of the policy, and is not guaranteed. Policy loans and withdrawals reduce the policy’s cash value and death benefit and may result in a taxable event. Surrender charges may reduce the policy's cash value in early years. Riders are supplemental benefits that can be added to a life insurance policy and are not suitable unless you also have a need for life insurance. Riders are optional, may require additional premium and may not be available in all states or on all products. This is not a solicitation of any specific insurance policy.
Variable life insurance contract holders are subject to investment risks, including the possible loss of principal invested. The fixed account guarantees are dependent upon the claims-paying ability of the insurer and do not protect the value of the variable product portfolios, which may fluctuate. Variable Annuity contract holders are subject to investment risks, including the possible loss of principal invested. Variable products are sold by prospectus which contains more complete information. Please have your clients read it and consider carefully the variable product’s objectives, risks, charges and expenses before they invest or send money. The prospectus contains this and other information about the investment company.
