Permanent insurance provides lifelong protection. As long as you pay the premiums, the death benefit will be paid. These policies are designed and priced for you to keep over a long period of time. So if you don't intend to keep the policy for the long term, this may be the wrong type of insurance for you.
Why would someone need coverage for an extended period of time? Because contrary to what a lot of people think, the need for life insurance often persists long after the kids have graduated college or the mortgage has been paid off. If you died the day after your youngest child graduated from college, your spouse would still be faced with daily living expenses. And what if your spouse outlives you by 10, 20 or even 30 years, which is certainly possible today. Would your financial plan, without life insurance, enable your spouse to maintain the lifestyle you worked so hard to achieve? And would you be able to pass on something to your children or grandchildren?
Another key characteristic of permanent insurance is a feature known as cash value or cash-surrender value. In fact, permanent insurance is often referred to as cash value insurance because these types of policies can build cash value over time, as well as provide a death benefit to your beneficiaries.
Cash values, which accumulate on a tax-deferred basis just like assets in most retirement and tuition savings plans, can be used in the future for any purpose you wish. If you like, you can borrow cash value for a down payment on a home, to help pay for your children's education or to provide income for your retirement. When you borrow money from a permanent insurance policy, you're using the policy's cash value as collateral and the borrowing rates tend to be relatively low. And unlike loans from most financial institutions, the loan is not dependent on credit checks or other restrictions. You ultimately must repay any loan with interest or your beneficiaries will receive a reduced death benefit and cash surrender value.
If you need or want to stop paying premiums, you can use the cash value to continue your current insurance protection for a specified time or to provide a lesser amount of protection covering you for your lifetime. If you decide to stop paying premiums and surrender your policy, the guaranteed policy values are yours. Just know that if you surrender your policy in the early years, there may be little or no cash value.
With all types of permanent policies, the cash value of a policy is different from the policy's face amount. The face amount is the money that will be paid at death or policy maturity (most permanent policies typically "mature" around age 100). Cash value is the amount available if you surrender a policy before its maturity or your death. Moreover, the cash value may be affected by your insurance company's financial results or experience, which can be influenced by mortality rates, expenses, and investment earnings.
Types of Permanent Insurance
"Permanent insurance" is really a catchall phrase for a wide variety of life insurance products that contain the cash-value feature. Within this class of life insurance, there are a multitude of different products. Here we list the most common ones.
If you're the kind of person who likes premiums that will remain fixed and predictable over time, you may want to consider:
Whole life or ordinary life. This the most common type of permanent insurance. It provides you with the certainty of a guaranteed amount of death benefit and a guaranteed rate of return on your cash values. And you'll have a level premium that is guaranteed to never increase for life.
Another valuable benefit of a participating whole life insurance policy is the opportunity to earn dividends. While your policy's guarantees provide you with a minimum death benefit and cash value, dividends give you the opportunity to receive an enhanced death benefit and cash value growth. Dividends are a way for the company to share part of its favorable results with policyholders. When you purchase a participating policy, it is expected that you will receive dividends after the second policy year - but they are not guaranteed. Dividends, if left in the policy, can provide an offset (and more) to the eroding effects of inflation on your coverage amount.
Variable life. This type of insurance is offered via a prospectus and provides death benefits and cash values that vary with the performance of a portfolio of underlying investment options. You can allocate your premiums among a variety of investment options offering different degrees of risk and reward: stocks, bonds, combinations of both, or a fixed account that guarantees interest and principal. This type of insurance is for people who are willing to assume investment risk to try to achieve greater returns. With variable life you're shifting much of the investment risk from the insurance company to yourself. Good investment performance would provide the potential for higher cash values and ultimate death benefits. If the specified investments perform poorly, cash values and death benefits would drop accordingly.
While some people like the predictability of fixed premiums, others prefer adjustable premiums because they like having the option to make higher premium payments when they have extra cash on hand or lower ones when money is tight. If you find this kind of flexibility appealing, you may want to consider:
Universal life. This type of insurance is offered via a prospectus and allows you, after your initial payment, to pay premiums at any time, in virtually any amount, subject to certain minimums and maximums. You also can reduce or increase the death benefit more easily than under a traditional whole life policy. With universal life, you get the certainty of a guaranteed minimum amount of death benefit, as long as premiums are sufficient to sustain that death benefit. Any guarantee relies on the claims paying ability of the issuing insurance company. As such, do your homework and select a financially sound company. Most universal life policies will also provide a guaranteed rate of return on your cash values, with one important exception. It is possible that you will not accumulate any cash value if any, or all, of the following circumstances occur: administrative expenses increase, mortality assumptions are changed, the insurance company's investment portfolio underperforms, premium payments are insufficient.
Variable Universal Life. This type of insurance is similar to universal life. It is a flexible premium, permanent life insurance policy that allows you to have premium dollars allocated to a variety of investment options, including a fixed account. The policy generally provides income tax-free death benefit, has a cash value that grows tax-deferred, and is accessible through policy loans and/or withdrawals. Note that loans and withdrawals will reduce the death benefit by the outstanding loan amount plus any interest. The policy allows for increase or decrease of the policy coverage and premium changes to the life insurance benefit option. Some companies also give you the option to guarantee the death benefit with the Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefit Rider. Overall, variable universal life can be a good option for people who want to combine life insurance with a higher potential for investment return at a higher risk, of course. For more complete information, be sure to always request the appropriate product and fund prospectuses as they contain information you need to consider such as the investment objectives, risks, and charges and expenses of the investment.
|
