Strategies to Maximize Your Death Benefit

9 November 6:36 am by

Over the years, you’ve continued to make payments on your permanent life insurance policy with the goal of providing a death benefit to your beneficiaries. As you’ve made these premium payments you’ve also been able to build some cash value. While accumulating cash value is an added benefit, many people are looking to maximize the death benefit return for their beneficiaries. Life insurance policies are sometimes like software updates – at no cost, you can update your phone and achieve the latest improvements if you just give it some attention. For decades, mortality rating tables have been used to price life insurance policies. This mortality table is used by every major insurance carrier in the country and while it’s improved over the years, it incorporates the life expectancy data for the unhealthy along with the healthy; meaning the healthy are paying more than they should because the unhealthy weigh the table down. While the mortality table has generally improved, it does not compare to the one used by the M Financial Group. As a member of the M Financial Group, we at TMH & M have access to our own mortality table with many of the the major insurance carriers. This table helps provides some of the lowest cost life insurance in the industry. What does this mean to someone that already owns a policy? It may be beneficial to update your insurance. With a simple review, we can help you see if there is the potential for more death benefit with no increased costsmoving to an M Financial Group policy with TMH & M.

Life Insurance Reviews

A life insurance review is a process for documenting the current value of your policy, the premium cost, and the projected return via death benefit and cash value. This information is then used to calculate what changes might be made available in the policy. There are a few ways a review can help you modify your insurance. It can potentially:

  • Decrease or eliminate premium costs.
  • Increase death benefits.
  • Lower fees.

Modifications to Existing Policies

The team at TMH & M are experts in maximizing life insurance policies. There are a few different ways policies can be revised in the interests of maximizing your premium to benefit ratio:

    • Apply the existing cash value to a new product, reduce or eliminate existing premium schedule and keep the same death benefit.

Apply the existing cash value to a new product, keep existing premium schedule and increase death benefit immediately.

  • In some cases, apply the existing cash value to a new product, reduce or eliminate existing premium schedule and increase death benefit immediately.

 

Case Study

Thirteen years ago a 60 year-old couple purchased a survivorship life insurance policy for the purpose of providing a tax-free death benefit to their heirs. The couple purchased the coverage through a retail insurance agency and had it reviewed by their financial advisor. The insurance portfolio provided the following:

  • $7.6M death benefit.
  • Portfolio was split between two insurance carriers Hartford Life and Mass Mutual.
  • The annual premium of $35,745 per year.
  • The death benefit slowly grew over time to a maximum of $8.3M at age 93.

What the couple didn’t realize was there was a better option available to them. Traditional retail agents cannot access the M Financial Group product, it’s pricing and coverage advantages. M Financial Group was founded on the principle that the affluent market should not be forced to purchase high cost, retail product. Due to the high end market, M Financial Group underwrites and it’s relationships with the top end insurance carriers, it has built its own mortality rating table to give a far superior product to its clients.

When TMH & M was asked to review the existing policy the couple was still interested in maximizing their death benefit. It didn’t take long to determine there were two options:

Option 1

  • Exchange the existing portfolio while maintaining the $35,745 premium but increase the death benefit to $10,872,860.
  • This represents an immediate 41% increase in death benefit with no additional premium cost.

Option 2

  • Exchange the existing portfolio but shorten the premium duration to 10 years at $40,985 as well as increase the death benefit to $8,500,000.
  • This represents an immediate 11% increase in death benefit and a total premium savings of $1,180,165 over the duration of the contract.

*Experiences of clients with life insurance products will depend on their unique facts and circumstances and we cannot guarantee the same results for all clients.

Conclusion

If you are wondering what your options for maximizing your death benefit are or if you really need to make that next premium payment, then you need to get an insurance review. It will give you the details about the state of your coverage that can helpyou to make the best decisions with regard to its future.

File # 1509-2018