How a Simple Insurance Review Helped a Client Save Big ($1M Lifetime Value?)
Something that may make sense one moment, may not make sense in another.
This is the nature of the impact of change on which action makes sense at any given period of time.
This especially is the case with insurance.
Your home increases in value - need to increase the dwelling amount on your home insurance.
You get a new vehicle - need to renew your policy for your auto insurance.
Your health needs change - need to review your health insurance.
You have a child - need to review your life insurance.
Insurance works best when it enhances your financial plan.
Measuring the impact of risk on your plan and devising strategy to cover this risk.
On its own, insurance isn’t a financial plan—it’s a tool within a larger strategy.
When it comes to life insurance, the goal is to cover a specific risk over a specific period of time.
If your family/loved ones or business partners rely on you financially or you have a high net worth that could be subject to estate tax - then you likely should have life insurance.
Given the temporary nature of the need for life insurance, term insurance solves this risk both cheaply & effectively.
The main exceptions where permanent insurance could come into play is someone who will be subject to estate taxes upon passing and needs to ensure their policy lasts their lifetime, someone who has no qualified investment vehicles to save into and wants tax-deferred growth or someone who wants to spend all their assets and looks at permanent insurance as an inheritance for their children.
There’s no right or wrong - there’s just goals and objectives.
So when I viewed a recent case of a healthy young business owner with 4 permanent insurance policies with total premiums paid around $30,000/yr and the cumulative death benefit was $380,000 - I investigated further.
First line of investigation is around goals.
What is the business owner looking to accomplish with these four policies?
The answer:
Growth and a way to loan against that growth over time.
With the goal of growth - the next question that I asked myself was:
Is permanent life insurance the best vehicle for growth?
To answer this, I requested in-force illustrations of the policies.
This will give a baseline of policy performance projections, annual premiums payments required, guaranteed values vs. non-guaranteed values, dividend assumptions, etc.
Upon further review of the guaranteed accumulated cash value, you gather an idea of the expectation of the policies performance.
Each of the policies had a guaranteed cash value at the end of 15 years of ~$404,947.
Contrast this to an investment account where you’re funding the account at the same premium amount you’re funding the life insurance over the same period of 15 years, assuming a 6% annualized rate of return, you get ~$608,503.
For a total savings at year 15 of $203,556.
Let’s stretch this out even further.
Consider age 65.
The guaranteed cash value from the policies was $749,806.
Contrast this to our investment account alternative, assuming a 6% annualized rate of return, you get ~$1,736,875.
For a total age 65 savings of $987,069.
This benefit further expands well over $1,000,000 as you move past age 70.
This analysis isn’t without it’s flaws - there’s assumptions being used that could alter the outcome, such as:
The assumption the individual actually saves the premium amount each year & returns are 6% (or the investor has stomach for market volatility).
The individual lives until age 65+. In a scenario where there’s an early premature passing, the death benefit plus the cash value, could outweigh the invested differential (granted - the idea here would be to replace the whole life insurance with adequate term insurance - but we can put that to the side).
Taxes play a large role in realized returns.
But as these risks were discussed, we concluded that:
We have a plan to ensure the premium dollars are redeployed to ensure long-term goals are met.
6% is a reasonable return assumption for the asset allocation they’ll be invested in over the long-term based on historical data.
This growth potential is significantly higher than that of cash value life insurance. Further, saving a portion of this premium within qualified accounts will allow for similar tax deferred growth.
We’ll be purchasing term insurance in an amount greater than the current cash value insurance offers and a significantly lower premium amount.
For the amount saved inside a taxable account, the tax drag from income & future capital gains from the investments is still larger than the cash value life insurance.
Further upon death, there is a step up in basis, so the full brokerage account can be realized tax-free to heirs.
We expect to live long and healthy lives so to purchase permanent insurance for the potential of a positive return on investment from a premature death isn’t something we’re worried about.
The ability to loan against the cash value life insurance is less attractive than a loan from a securities backed line of credit because your brokerage account can still grow on the loaned dollars unlike a loan from life insurance which is an actual check cut from your cash value.
This isn’t to say that permanent insurance is bad and term insurance is good.
Rather:
Any decision to purchase any product needs to be considered in the context of your financial plan.
Something that may make sense one moment, may not make sense in another.