Introducing our newest blog series: Kevin's Korner. In addition to our Founder Mike Pepe, Kevin Kelley is one of our resident insurance experts with decades of experience in the life insurance industry. We thought he could offer valuable insights, especially regarding the impact of COVID19 on our industry right now. Read below for the first installment of this series in which Kevin explains how recent economic upheaval might be impacting VULs, IULs, and ULs, and how Proformex might help!
Undoubtedly, the recent upheaval in our economy has you wondering about everything when it comes to financial matters. Whether it’s the value of your 401(k) or the value of the mutual fund you bought into last year, there are going to be questions and concerns.
Are you still on track to accomplish your goals?
Do you need to make a course correction at this time?
What if you don’t do anything?
Let us help! The Proformex platform can help equip you to answer these kind of questions for you and your clients. When a policy like a Variable Universal Life contract is loaded into our platform, we’ll order the current policy statements and inforce illustrations to help you get a good view of the current health of your policy. Our report will let you know if the policy is still tracking to perform as planned. If it’s off track for some reason, such as account performance or missed premium payments, we can help you get it back on track by ordering alternative illustrations showing a different premium amount, a reduced death benefit or additional years to pay premiums. Whatever the outcome, you’ll be better equipped to have that conversation with your client and, together, determine the most appropriate resolution to achieving their goals.
Of course, monitoring a policy is not a one-time deal. Once your policy information has been loaded into our platform, we’ll order the illustrations and statements for you annually and create a report for your use during your annual review with your clients. Then, if it’s necessary to make a change in course with the policy, you will have the information you need to make some timely recommendations.
Proformex is not just for VUL policies, though. If you have any Indexed Universal Life or Universal Life policies on the books, those need to be monitored as well. We all know that upheaval in the financial markets can have an impact on our VUL business, but what about the IULs? It’s great when they’re performing at their cap, but what about when they hit the crediting floor or 0% or 1%? How long can the policy tolerate those kinds of numbers?
Once again, if you’re using the Proformex platform, we’ll keep you better informed of how the policy is tracking and what you might be able to do to get it back on track by ordering alternate illustrations or considering product alternatives.
When it comes to UL, we all know that the declining interest crediting rates will have an impact on our policies, but just how big of an impact? If the UL policy has a no lapse guarantee, is the client staying within the guidelines to enforce that guarantee? Skipped premium payment can cause real problems with those polices, problems that may not be apparent until it’s too late to take action to correct them.
So when it comes to providing support during these uncertain times, you're not all alone. Use the support that can be provided by Proformex and keep yourself and your clients informed during these challenging times.
