There's a famous quote: "The more things change, the more they stay the same." In the past year we've experienced exceptional volatility in the investment markets and seen renewed congressional interest in raising income and estate taxes. One thing hasn't changed, though: The important role that life insurance continues to play in your clients' financial and estate plans. Life insurance provides tax advantages, financial stability, and guaranteed liquidity, key benefits that your clients probably overlooked during the bull market but will welcome today. Cindy Watson of Watson Insurance and Financial Group in Montrose, Colo., will speak with considerable expertise on the broad-reaching advantages of life insurance.
Utilize life insurance as an estate-planning tool
"The tax codes are changing and more clients will be subjected to greater estate taxes upon their deaths," she says. "Positioning life insurance in clients' estate plans will help their heirs or favored charities receive that money and avoid the need to come up with any tax money to do that. Essentially, we're protecting the estate from the IRS or anyone else coming in and taking over that estate."
Highlight the tax and security benefits
"If something were to happen to one of your clients and all you had with them was mutual funds or other similar investments, right now the value of those investments probably would be considerably less than what they had invested," Watson adds. "Implementing life insurance within those clients' plans will ensure that when your clients need money, regardless of when they pass away and regardless of what the market is doing, they have that money. Whether they need it to continue a business, to protect a family, to put children through college or give to the charities of their choice, the funds will be there."
