The following is a newsletter put out by National Underwriter on STOLI (Stranger Owned Life Insurance). 

BY MATT BRADY    
Washington Bureau — NU Online News Service, June 12, 2008, 5:07 p.m. EDT

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland today signed into law a bill that was written in an effort to root out stranger-originated life insurance.

The new amendments to Ohio insurance law “recognize a shared responsibility of the life settlement industry, life insurance companies and the [insurance] department to protect consumers against STOLI transactions,” says Mary Jo Hudson, director of the Ohio Department of Insurance.

The bill, H.B. 404, officially amends the state Viatical Settlement Act. Under the new law, the department will have more authority over life settlements, and life settlement brokers and providers are required to give insurers more information before engaging in a life settlement.

Life insurers will have to ask specific questions aimed at uncovering STOLI schemes and report suspected schemes to the department.

The Ohio law also limits the ability of consumers who use certain types of premium financing arrangements to sell life insurance policies within 5 years of buying the policies.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the inescapable facts of life settlements is that they take longer than anyone involved wants. But, according to speakers at the recent Life Insurance Settlements Association conference in Washington, D.C., there may not be much anyone can do about it.

“Certain steps have to be done,” such as the underwriting and evaluating of a policy, noted Scott Kirby, co-president of business development and compliance issues for Orlando-based Advanced Settlements LLC.

But there are things an advisor can do to minimize the time a settlement process takes, he added. Providing a complete file and application to a life settlement broker is an example. If documents are missing, or even if they are just not current enough, “that slows the process down.”

There are a few reasons why files come in with incomplete or old data, he said. One is that “people want to travel down the path of least resistance” and try to get the settlement done with as little paperwork as possible. “It takes them a while to understand that we need as much information as possible,” he said.

Incomplete information can’t be fully evaluated by providers. According to Bryan Freeman, president of Habersham Funding, LLC in Atlanta, and one of the catches is that, as more and more pieces of information come in, they can trigger as many questions as they answer. “As they piecemeal that information to you, you see something you’ve never seen before and you have to ask about that,” he said.

By Matt Brady

Read more at http://www.settlementwatch.com/Pages/CustomView.aspx?ID=95

According to a Harris Interactive survey conducted for CareersBuilder.com, close to 3 out of 5 workers age 50+ intend to look for work elsewhere once they retire from their current jobs. The top 2 reasons given for continuing to work were that they could not afford to retire (44%) and that they needed health insurance benefits (33%).

Among workers age 65+, both men and women at all age breakdowns showed double digit growth in the percentage that were working full-time between 1994 and 2007. The percentage of working women
who were working full-time increased by 35.3% for those ages 65-69 and 17.9% for those age 70+ over this time period. The increase was 27.7% for men age 65-69 and 16% for those age 70+.

Murray Gendell, Georgetown University
Older Workers Increasing Their Labor Force Participation and Hours of WorkEmployee Benefits Monthly Labor Review, Volume 131, Number 1 U.S Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics January 2008 http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/01/art3full.pdf

Guaranteed Minimum Accumulation Benefit (GMAB) Rider is now available on ING’s Variable Universal Life-CV.  The Guaranteed Minimum Accumulation Benefit (GMAB) Rider provides your clients with UNLIMITED UPSIDE POTENTIAL with downside risk protection.

Controlled Impairments Play a Key Role in Underwriting

When it comes to underwriting underwriter’s have a few tips to help you understand how controlled impairments are viewed - which in turn may help your life cases.

To underwriters, controlled impairments like the one’s below indicate positive factors:

• Later age of onset of disease
• Compliance, stability, regular medical follow-up
• Risk-factor modification/clinical stability and improvement

In addition, they consider a possible range of ranting:

• Most cancers unisurable within two to three years of diagnosis
• Most require flat extras in years two through six insurable
• If cancer was metastatic, most are not insurable within 10 years from end of treatment

If so, check out West Coast Life’s NEW Liberalized Underwriting Stance on MVRs & Moving Violations!

Did you know that West Coast Life recently liberalized there underwriting stance regarding
MVRs & moving violations?

While two moving violations will still qualify for preferred at best, your applicants can now have three before being offered standard.  You may wonder what a few speeding tickets have to do with your client’s mortality.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for people of every age from 2 through 34. A DUI/DWI or reckless driving charge in the past five years is still standard at best.

Los Angeles, CA - June 10, 2008 - A 55-year-old individual considering long-term care insurance protection can expect to pay $709-per-year for a base level of protection if they are married or $1,095 if they are single according to the 2008 Long-Term Care Insurance Price Index published by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (www.AALTCI.org). Costs for coverage increased about four percent from the prior year.

The annual index measures current costs for top-selling long-term care insurance policies that offer consumers approximately $115,000 in current benefits (base-level coverage), with protection increasing yearly as the individual ages. "That coverage will grow in value to over $305,000 of protection in 20 years," explains Jesse Slome, Executive Director of the national trade organization that conducted the research. The study compares costs for plans that provide benefits for 3-years or longer with an annual compound inflation option that increases the available insurance benefits by five percent compounded each year.

"The analysis highlights the benefits of obtaining coverage at younger ages and taking advantage of discounts offered to those in good health as well as to couples," Slome explains. "Someone seeking protection equal to today’s average cost of care, about $55,000, would pay $1,064 a year for a policy purchased at age 55," he notes. Costs for long-term care insurance are priced to remain level throughout the life of the policy, though this is not guaranteed. "If that same person waited until age 65 and no longer qualified for a preferred health discount, they would pay $3,221 yearly to obtain an equal level of future protection." That assumes policy costs do not increase over the next 10 year time period.

2008 premium survey rates provided by LTCI Partners, LLC, Chicago, IL