An insurance settlement represents the settlement of an insurance claim made on an insurance company. This could be a claim by an insured person under his own insurance policy, or a third party claim.
Insurance companies could make the settlement payments in different ways. One of these is to defer the payments as when the company promises to make annuity payments over a number of future years.
A life insurance settlement, or life settlement, is something different. It involves selling your life policy for immediate cash to a life insurance settlement company. If you are aged over 65, and have a life insurance policy, you could sell the policy. Life insurance policies are like any other asset that you own, and you are free to sell it.
Insurance Settlements Can be Cashed Out
Life Settlements are cash outs by their very nature. You could also cash out any deferred payments you are receiving under an insurance settlement. We look at both below.
Selling Life Insurance Policies
There are a number of reasons why you might want to sell your life insurance policy.
* Paying the premium has become a heavy financial burden
* You need cash for a prolonged medical treatment
* There are life policies in the market that are more cost effective
* There are investment options that you consider better
* Your business or personal situation have changed and a life insurance policy might not be the best
option under the changed situation
Factors like those mentioned above could make it better to cash out your life policy. In extreme cases, you might even have to let the policy lapse before you are able to make any claim.
The common alternative in such a case was to surrender the policy to the insurance company and get the surrender value. This was a poor alternative as the surrender value could be zero or a very low sum compared to the premium you have been paying for years.
If you are aged above 65, you now have the alternative to sell your policy and get a sum significantly higher than the surrender value. The amount depends on such factors as your present medical condition, statistical life expectation, smoking or tobacco use habit and the policy type.
Selling Other Insurance Settlements Involving Deferred Payments
Where your insurance settlement involves annuity payments, you might wish to cash it out for a lump sum. A lump sum of cash now could help you invest your money better or meet the expenses of a prolonged medical treatment.
In such cases you are allowed to accelerate your insurance settlement payments. A court process is involved to determine that cashing out the annuity payments is in your best interests. If the court approves the acceleration, you could sell your annuities in whole or in part and get a lump sum of cash.
Posts Tagged ‘ Life Policies ’
One of the benefits claimed for capitalism is that the investment market calls for transparency. That means all companies selling stocks through the various exchanges must disclose reasonably full details of their financial performance – at least enough to allow investors to make an informed decision on whether to buy or sell. If the information is deliberately incomplete or misleading in a real way, the company (and its senior executives) can be prosecuted. In theory, this keeps companies honest. In March 2010, the economists are still arguing about whether the recession is over. Some are passionately asserting that all the major economies will now start positive growth. Others are equally passionate in warning about double dip recession or stagnation. Whichever camp eventually proves right, one very interesting piece of news to come out of the companies selling life insurance is that their more conservative approach to investment has produced steady growth throughout the recession. When you think of all the companies selling their expertise for the management of investments or the exploitation of movements in value through the hedge funds, it is good to see traditional values of prudence paying off. The returns may have been relatively small, i.e. between 3 and 4%, but any investment manager showing a positive return during a recession is something of a superstar.
As indicated in an earlier article, this does not mean you should immediately buy a whole life policy. Ignoring the significant commission payments that cause much of your first year’s premium to disappear, it needs careful financial planning to decide whether whole life or the allied universal life fits your needs. One of the claimed advantages of whole life policies is they represent compulsory saving for your retirement, i.e. the cash value can either be drawn down or used as collateral for a loan if an emergency arises. But that is the purpose of the 401k accounts. Both represent tax-free ways of saving and investing for retirement. But the greater freedom to manage the 401k accounts and the absence of both upfront commissions and high management fees usually means the returns are higher. Do not be deceived by the short-term losses in your 401k accounts over the last two years. Taking the longer view, investments have shown steady growth over the last fifty years. In real terms, you can expect your 401k account to yield more than a whole life policy. Put another way, you should only buy a whole life or universal policy when you have the maximum invested in your 401k and other more tax efficient savings and investment plans.
This does not mean you should not buy life insurance. Making adequate provision for your family and other dependents is a wise move. But you should only buy whole life if you intend to keep the cash value untouched until all the other savings have been exhausted. Otherwise, you are not giving the investment element enough time to maximize the return. When you use this site and get life insurance quotes, take the time to work through your overall financial strategy. If a whole or universal life policy fits into your best possible plans, buy with confidence. Otherwise use the life insurance quotes to find policies to make the right level of financial provision for your dependents without having to rely on a large investment component. If in doubt, work through the figures with an independent insurance agent. Make sure you make the right decision.
One of the results of the recession has been to reinforce the tendency to opt for term insurance as the first life policy. With the disappearance of credit and the pressure on employment, people have decide to switch to prudence. That means paying down the debts and cutting back on discretionary spending. Is this financial puritanism sensible? There are a number of factors to consider. First, a definition. A term policy is life coverage for a fixed number of years. Think of it as like a bet. If you are still alive at the end of the term, the insurance keeps all the premiums, and you and your dependents get nothing. Now, let’s focus on the psychology of the young. Most never bother thinking about insurance or, if they do, it’s a very low priority. Why bother worrying about something that’s unlikely to happen for decades? Statistically, this is a reasonable view. Just as many young people back their health and refuse to buy an individual health plan, the majority see no advantage in life insurance. Life expectancy has been rising steadily over the last 50 years. This calm confidence lasts until they enter a stable relationship. Until children appear. But, by then, the cost of living has gone up and, potentially, what was two incomes has become one. Then, buying term insurance is the cheap option.
The real question is whether buying a whole life policy early is always the right answer. The argument goes that you take on the higher premiums when, as a young single, you have the most disposable income. Inflation and pay increases slowly make the higher premiums more affordable. If you do become a two-income family, this really takes the pressure off. Hopefully, by the time children come along, you have already produced a financial situation in which the premiums are now affordable. Hmmm. Back to definitions: this policy insures your life, but also has an investment element that builds up a cash value over time. If you keep up the premiums, this provides security during retirement and for your dependents. Except, people do not make rational financial decisions. The young prefer to enjoy their youth rather than stay home and save for their retirement. Worse, the reality of most of the investment elements is that they represent poor performance. If you bought term insurance and invested the balance of the premium saved in regular investments, you would almost certainly do better. The hard reality is the insurance companies charge commissions for setting up your account and then impose management fees for investing your money. This slices the top off the investment returns.
So the conclusion is slightly bad news. The decision on what to buy is not directly related to the life insurance quotes you receive through a site like this. The best value is buying term insurance and having the self-discipline to invest a growing proportion of your income. If you do not have that self-discipline, the whole life, universal and variable policies represent compulsory savings. In effect, you are paying the life company to do the work of investing for you. The perfect choice starts with the life insurance quotes and diverts through the office of an independent actuary who will give you an educated guess on the quality of the investment returns from the whole life policy as against managing your own investments over the next thirty years or so. Now you can decide whether you want to trust yourself or accept a low but guaranteed yield from the insurance company.
We all want to make sure our family and loved ones are protected and safe no matter what. This is why there are so many companies out there offering you to insure your life. Life coverage is a good way to protect your spouse, children, family members and loved ones from financial hardships in case of your death or disability. But besides insurance features, there are more and more policies providing with additional benefits that have money distribution and investment features to the underwriter. And the question is whether it’s reasonable to use insurance as a form of investment or there are better options for this.
Insuring your life as a form of investment
At first sight, having your life insured is a very good thing to do as you accumulate a good amount of money for your family that can be used for different purposes in case something happens to you. But there’s more to it than just that. In contrast with term policies that have no investment options, cash value (also known as whole life) policies have additional benefits, which make them a good investment instrument. These benefits allow withdrawing money from your account after a certain period if time has passed. You can obtain these funds in different ways:
- Withdrawing cash from the final coverage amount of the insurance policy. For example you have a $200,000 policy and want to withdraw $10,000. This means that the insurance company will pay out $190,000 in death benefit in case of your death.
- Paying insurance premiums from the accumulated cash value of your policy. This is a good way to have a relatively cheap life insurance in terms of whole life insurance. And there are no penalties for doing so.
- Using the cash value of your policy as a loan. This usually provides you with lower interest rates compared to loan products offered by lending institutions. You can even be free of any payments, however the money will be taken from your final death benefit, including a certain interest.
How much does it cost?
Of course, these possibilities give much food for thought as you may use the money withdrawn for multiple purposes, making your personal and your family’s life better. However, all these options come with a certain price tag, lowering your death benefit, which is obviously the initial purpose of insuring your life in general.
Withdrawing money from your insurance account can be proportional to the amount of money your death benefit will be lowered by, However, in some cases it can cost you much more than that. Sometimes there are additional fees and interests included, making your death benefit even smaller than you would expect. From this perspective there’s not much rationality in getting whole life policies, making them a simple waste of money.
And it’s not only this. Experts state that such policies have lower return on investment if compared to other investment tools, and suggest that it’s cheaper to get term insurance policies and an additional savings account or a loan rather than using costly cash value policies for that purpose.
However, it’s always better to shop around. Use life insurance quotes to find a less pricey whole life insurance policy so that you could use all the benefits for a lower cost.