Variable Life Insurance: A Pain In The Asset Allocation For Trustees

When purchasing a life insurance policy, the potential to achieve a higher rate of return than a fixed-rate product has made variable life insurance an increasingly attractive option for consumers over the last two decades. With the option to invest the policy’s cash value in separate accounts (commonly referred to as “sub-accounts”), which function similar to mutual funds, policy owners can participate in gains from [...]

Best Interest Standards for Life Insurance Would Be a TOLI Trustee’s Best Friend

As a TOLI trustee, you have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that every transaction - either a new policy sale or replacement is not only suitable for your client, but also in your client’s best interest.

Business Continuity – Unique Asset Management Reality Check

Millions of businesses worldwide have drafted or purchased business continuity plans, some have even practiced or simulated implementation of said plans, but few ever dreamed a worldwide pandemic would force these plans into action.  The rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus has impacted all of humanity, including thousands of businesses which include fiduciary services. For those who serve as a fiduciary or provide fiduciary support [...]

Remediation, the Weak Link for Trustees – The TOLI Handbook: Chapter 16

A TOLI trustee we work with received a request from a grantor tired of gifting to pay premiums on his portfolio of whole life policies. His agent suggested that the three policies be replaced with one policy with a reduced death benefit. The existing portfolio totaled $5.7 million of coverage.  The agent proposed transferring the $2.1 million of cash value into a $3 million equity [...]

Prudently Managing ILITs – It Is More Than Just Tracking a Policy

When we first ventured into the trust-owned life insurance (TOLI) servicing business, our lead product was a policy tracking and trust administration system - later called InsuranceIQ, and it was light years ahead of anything TOLI trustees had at their disposal. At the time, most trustees simply got an in-force ledger every couple of years, along with a rating update for the carrier, placed it [...]

3 Trends in Corporate ILIT Administration That You Should Be Aware Of

There are three continuing trends with respect to TOLI management in the corporate fiduciary space.  If you find yourself managing or overseeing TOLI at a bank or trust company, I’m sure you are seeing some of this play out in your own department. TREND #1 Overdependence on Support Software If used correctly, ILIT support software is great for minimizing potential administrative miscues.  Many of [...]

TOLI Trustee Alert: Oops, the Policy Lapsed…Now What?

The most common fear for a life insurance trustee is that somehow the ball is dropped and the policy in their care lapses. After all, a trust-owned life insurance (TOLI) trustee, even if they are not sophisticated in all the nuances of life insurance policy management, should at least be able to keep the policy in force. But unintended lapses do happen, and when they [...]

Take the TOLI Challenge: In a Permanent Life Insurance Policy, the Cost of the Policy is Equal to the Premium – Yes or No?

The answer is an emphatic NO. Some permanent life insurance policies, specifically guaranteed universal life (GUL) and Whole Life (WL), have required premiums, though WL out of pocket premiums can be reduced by dividends, paid-up addition cash values or policy loans. But the premium paid is not the actual cost of the policy and finding the underlying costs on the policies is a challenge. For [...]

Take the TOLI Challenge: Can You Answer This?

What steps should you take if a grantor says they want to surrender their policy? In the decade-plus that we have been managing life insurance for TOLI trustees, we have noticed that the weak link in their services usually is remediation. The inability to analyze policy options in changing situations is an area of future liability. Some trustees we have spoken with have surrendered policies [...]

Professional Designations: Training Your Staff Helps Your Team and Your Firm

Over the years, we at ITM TwentyFirst have been leaders in peer education. The TOLI Handbook, a free download available here as a PDF, provides industry peers with a single source guide for managing trust-owned life insurance (TOLI) trusts and policies. We have, over the years, provided hundreds of hours of professional CE for several professional designations. Our staff is encouraged and incentivized to seek [...]

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