Equity index universal life (EIUL) is the hottest product in the permanent life insurance marketplace. The “star of the life insurance show” according to one published report (1) that is touted as providing the upside of the equities market without the risk of loss. The carriers accomplish this by crediting the EIUL policy with the positive returns of an index (often the S&P 500 – without dividends) subject to a cap (a non-guaranteed maximum credited rate) while limiting the downside with a floor (typically 0%) so policy returns cannot be negative (through policy cash value will still go down).

We were flooded with replacement requests after the 2008-09 market meltdown from grantors holding variable universal life (VUL) policies tied to the equity market that had suffered big losses who believed the EIUL policy was more conservative than their existing policy.

While the product has a place in estate planning it has been misunderstood with many policies designed with expectations that may not be met. As a TOLI trustee, this is an issue. If a policy does not perform as expected it will be your job to ask the grantor to gift more to the trust – not a welcome task.

There are several reasons that the policy may not perform as projected in a sales illustration.

  1. The credited rate assumed in the policy is too high: Sales illustrations for EIUL policies were often shown with assumed crediting rates approaching 8%. While an 8% S&P 500 average may seem realistic it’s probably not. The return does not include dividends, which has historically been a rather significant portion of the total return. And though the floor will limit the downside, the cap limits the upside. For example, over the last forty years the S&P 500 has had eight losing years, but in that time, it has returned greater than 10% in over half of the years, creating a drag on actual returns credited in policies with caps 10% or less.
  2. Illustration games: Interest bonuses and multipliers can inflate the returns in an illustration. AG 49, an industry guideline effectively limited the maximum crediting rate that could be a shown in policy illustrations to approximately 7% but did not limit the use of techniques that inflate illustrated returns in a policy such as bonuses and multipliers. For example, while a sales illustration may show a credited return of 6% at the top of the page, the fine print below may point out that the policy includes a 1.25% multiplier effectively increasing the crediting rate of the hypothetical illustration up to 7.5%. Understanding the policy illustration assumptions is crucial when reviewing these policies.
  3. Changes in the Non-Guaranteed Elements: Changes in the cap or other non-guaranteed elements can drastically change the policy performance. For example, suppose a policy is issued with a 10% cap, 0% floor, 100% participation rate and an assumption that the index will return 7%. According to an online calculator (2), at a 10% cap, the interest credited to the policy would be 5.39, but if the cap dropped to 8.5% and all else, including the return in the index, remained the same the interest credited would drop to 4.76%.

These are just some issues a TOLI trustee must review and comprehend before accepting an EIUL policy. To learn more about this product and the steps you should take before advising a client to purchase one, please refer to Chapter 10 in the TOLI Handbook, a free 155-page guide for TOLI trustees or anyone dealing with life insurance. To get a free copy, click here.

 

  1. Tuohy, Cyril. “IUL the Life Insurance Star of 2017 Sales.” Insurancenewsnet.com, 26 Dec. 2017, insurancenewsnet.com/.
  2. JH IUL Translator.” JH IUL Translator,” Iultranslate.com.