The interest in long-term guarantees of premiums and death benefits in flexible premium survivorship life policies is spilling over rapidly from individual products with those designs.
In fact, 2 new policies in this excerpt from the biannual Full Disclosure survivorship life edition feature no illustrated policy values at all. These universal life designs are designed to deliver low cost, guaranteed premiums to age 100 or beyond with little or no cash value at maturity. While more complicated than a guaranteed whole life policy, for example, insurers are filling the low cost/no values niche with either new products or guarantee riders on policies that typically have a low premium to carry a policy to maturity on a currently illustrated basis.
Thats what is new with SUL plans, but there is always something new in the survivorship market, particularly as producers and companies alike align sales scenarios to charitable giving and income scenarios.
Our usual research in compiling Full Disclosure includes complete policy specifications and features, current and guaranteed costs and expenses, and a wide sampling of illustrations. The excerpts in this report focus on illustrated values for whole, universal and variable life survivorship products from the leading companies in the market. And while these charts are only slices of the Full Disclosure database, they will give you an idea of how these products illustrate on the street. All data is current as of Nov. 1, 2003.
To get an overview of each policys strength, you can refer to the Product Design Objectives section in these excerpts that includes standardized categories. You can readily see what a policy is designed to do, what unique aspects it possesses, and taken in whole, where the marketplace is headed.
While not all of a products design objectives may be listed, you can see for what market many of these policies are meant. Some are built for low premiums, for example, while others are meant to generate major league cash values or none at all. A policy may list Maximum Retirement Income, indicating it may have "zero-cost" policy loans and strong cash value accumulation performance leading to strong income scenarios.
