Does the investment performance of your life insurance company really matter? The answer is simple, yes and no.
The reason people ask this question is often because they are being told by that the life insurance company where they already have a policy or the life insurance company they are considering buying a policy from is not performing as well as the one the representative they are talking to is trying to get them to buy a life insurance policy from.
The truth is that if the life insurance company is a well established one such as Prudential, New York Life, Mass Mutual and any of 2,000 or more companies the names of which are familiar to everyone are performing just fine and passing the benefits along to their policyholders.
Think about it, these companies compete with one another just like their agents compete with each other. There are certain life insurance policies that one company has more experience providing that another and as a result is likely to have better results with them and pass those results along to its policy holders. There are certain types of professions and businesses they some life insurance companies are better at serving than their competitors, with perhaps better returns or lower premiums for their insureds.
But when you die they will all pay the claim and the differences in premiums and returns of investment will be quickly forgotten. It is the protection at the moment of death that you are buying the insurance for, not its investment potential remember.
Of course if the life insurance policy and its annual premiums are very large, the performance of the life insurance company can make a big difference in terms of return on the premiums paid, no doubt about it. Maybe so large in fact that the effective amount of money you are paying dramatically decrease and you can use the resulting savings to buy more life insurance.
No matter how much you already bought it was not enough to come close to replacing your economic life value and you know it.
In the old days when you were going to buy a car you would visit a dealership that sells a single kind of car, one with the features and benefits you were looking for. If you could not get together on the cost you would drive across town to another dealer of the same kind of car to haggle over the price - the features and benefits had already been established.
The second dealer would attempt to beat the first dealer's price or renegotiate the accessories in a way to get a compromise between features and cost. Now car dealers offer a wider range of brands, types, models, with an unlimited variety and combination of accessories. The decision making process did not get easier. In fact buying a new car or pickup becomes like a part time job, with people spending hours online after seeing the latest TV commercials, getting online quotes and bids, and then weekend after week end going from dealership to dealership.
Of all the questions they ask when looking for a new car or truck they would never think to ask about the performance of the car manufacturer. General Motors is in bankruptcy, or not and Ford Inc. is having incredible financial challenges with the failure of some of its ventures. But nothing any financial analyst or anybody is going to deter you from buying a new Ford S 150 if that's what you want.
The same is true of life insurance company performance. Among the established traditional life insurance companies there is a difference between their performance. Some have better investment portfolios, some are still working themselves out of past poor decisions, some specialize in more profitable markets, and some are more inclined than others to reward their stockholders more than their policy holders.
How can you sort this all out? How can you get to the bottom of the issue of life insurance company performance? How can you negotiate with an insurance company with hundreds of policy plans and accessories to offer? The simple answer is that you can't.
The best solution when it comes to life insurance, when you are concerned about a certain life insurance company's past present or future financial performance is to connect with a trusted life insurance professional, someone with the respect of a friend or fellow business owner whose opinions you value the most.
Talk to the recommended life insurance agent to find out if they have had experience working with other people like you - same job, same business, same industry, same profession as you. People you naturally identify with.
You might find that the best people to ask for the name of this highly trusted and respected life insurance professional are members of your peer group. Peer groups provide us all with access to the collective brains and experiences of people like us - people who have no financial stake in the advice and help they give you any more than you do it the advice and council you provide them.
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