Inspect What You Expect: 43rd Annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning Follow-Up

Thank you to all of those that visited THEInsuranceAdvisor.COM booth at the 43rd Annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning this past week. We were pleased to be a part of the conference for the 6th year in a row and to be able to continue to share how THEInsuranceAdvisor.COM Research can make a difference to your practice and in the life insurance portfolios of your clients. From those we talked with, there were two common themes that ran through most every discussion at this year’s Heckerling. The first revolved around how estate and transfer tax planning over the next twelve months will likely achieve greater results than in any time in recent memory for three major reasons:

• Because many clients assets are undervalued due to recent events in the financial markets, more assets can be transferred now with less transfer tax implications, and when the market recovers and asset values grow, all this growth will have been transferred free of transfer taxes.
• Because interest rates are low, arbitrage tools (like zeroed-out GRATs) can transfer an even greater amount of assets with little or no transfer tax implications.
• Most clients who have putt off planning in recent years due to the uncertainty of estate taxes are now coming to the conclusion that estate taxes are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and given this emerging clarity of the estate planning environment, more clients will be more receptive to planning than in years past.

The second common theme was that the “broken promises” and unfulfilled expectations revealed by recent events in the financial markets remind us all to do a better job of inspecting what we expect from the financial products that are the subject of our estate plans. Of course, the first objective of many estate plans is to minimize transfer taxes to the greatest extent possible. Then, the second objective is often to finance remaining transfer taxes, and often with the use of life insurance.

In order to reassure your clients that they made the appropriate choice in life insurance products and/or reveal when there are opportunities for improvement, it is therefore important to inspect what you expect out of our client’s life insurance portfolios. Use the Confidential Policy Evaluator (CPE) to reveal what your clients are being charged for cost of insurance charges (COIs), fixed administration expenses (FAEs), cash-value-based “wrap fees” (e.g., M&Es) and premium loads, and what they are getting in performance of invested assets underlying policy cash values.

With CPE, you know how the current portfolio holding or newly proposed product measures up against the benchmarks for ALL products in its peer group, and why. It is an easy-to-use tool that can help reassure your clients of their financial decisions. Subscribe now and take advantage of the 43rd Annual Heckerling Conference discount of 20% off each report for an entire year.

*Congratulations to THEInsuranceAdvisor.COM R/C Hummer winner, Michael Niemann.