ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER
Whole Life Insurance and Retirement
As the Baby Boomer generation starts reaching retirement age, insurance and annuity brokers are gearing up their sales to seniors and the elderly. Ads, mailers, and aggressive sales practices have helped convince a large portion of the senior population that their savings aren’t safe unless their invested in financial products. As money flows into the insurance industry, a wide variety of new and exotic products have started to spring up. Hybrid, indexed, variable, and other varieties of insurance and annuities have started to become substantial revenue sources for insurance companies. Many of these types of policies advertise increased income, flexibility, and security for seniors; in fact, they often sacrifice the wellbeing of their clients to increase income for the company.
One of the insurance products that companies often promotes as being the best choice for seniors is whole life insurance. While the product itself doesn’t sound particularly objectionable, it is actually a far more expensive alternative to term life policies, which offer the same coverage for as little as 1/10 the cost of an equivalent whole life policy. The other supposed advantage of whole life policies is that they supposedly accumulate a “cash value,” and some financial advisors use this to sell whole life policies as investments. However, our San Francisco insurance attorneys have seen many evaluations of whole life as an investment that indicate that it is a remarkably poor choice, as it has a very low interest rate, very high management costs, and requires a substantial income to keep paying the premiums.
Often, whole life policies ae sold by downplaying the cost and trying to convince potential clients to view it as a bank account that also happens to have an insurance component. When seniors who have been sold this bill of goods actually sign the contract, however, they often find that the whole life policy is much more of a drain on their resources than they were led to believe. If they try to surrender the policies, however, they often find that they’ve triggered a new round of costs and fees, and may have trouble holding onto any of the “cash value” that they’ve accumulated.
Some of the major annuity and life insurance providers are:
- Aviva/Athene/Accordia Life Insurance Company
- Transamerica Life Insurance Company
- John Hancock Life Insurance Company
- Bankers Life Insurance and Casualty company
- Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company
- Midland Life Insurance Company
- North American Company for Life and Health Insurance
- Pacific Life Insurance Company
- Prudential Life Insurance Company
- Genworth Life Insurance Company
- ING USA Annuity and Life Insurance Company
- Lincoln Benefit Life Company
- Metlife/Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
- Unum Life Insurance Company of America
- Voya/Reliastar Life Insurance Company
Contact Us
If you or a loved one has been the victim of an improperly sold or administered whole life insurance policy, contact the Evans Law Firm at (415) 441-8669, or by email at info@evanslaw.com. Our San Francisco insurance attorneys have experience handling cases involving complex financial contracts and large insurance companies, and can help guide your case through a civil trial or toward an equitable settlement.
