Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Financial advisors are not immune from sticky, tricky etiquette dilemmas. Now comes “Mind Your Manners: How to Be Your Best Self in Any Situation,” by Sara Jane Ho, bringing no-nonsense tips and sassy quips to what can be a musty subject. In an interview, we ask Ho, host of the Emmy-nominated Netflix series “Mind Your Manners,” if it’s OK for financial advisors to use humor with clients. “Absolutely,” says Ho, 38, who began as an investment banking analyst before making a sharp career turn and opening China’s first finishing school. “But if it’s dirty humor, maybe not, unless it’s contextual.” Her book is packed with such pointers on polite behavior as “Don’t lick your knife.” In addition, she emphasizes the importance of resourcefulness and relates how “reciprocal obligation” can help advisors. In the interview, Ho, who earned an MBA at Harvard Business School, discusses how to keep a widow from leaving a couple’s financial advisor upon the husband’s death and the worst thing a salesperson can do, especially when trying for a good first impression. Here are highlights of our conversation: “I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m Miss Manners with a touch of Machiavelli,” you write. Please elaborate. I’m not pretending...

The holders can get cash out of either a whole life policy or a universal life policy by selling the policy, withdrawing assets or borrowing against the cash value. MIB: MIB is a Braintree, Massachusetts-based organization that helps life insurers share underwriting information. It bases the monthly shopping statistics on application processing volume. Age breakouts: Here’s how U.S. life application activity changed between February 2023 and the latest month for five age groups: Ages 0-30: +2.5% Ages 31-40: +5.8% Ages 51-60: +0.3% Ages 61-70: +1.6% Ages 71 and older: +8.0% Coverage costs: Policygenius, a web broker, publishes monthly price charts based on the prices that term life issuers offer their customers. The lowest price is for a 25-year-old female nonsmoker who needs $250,000 in death benefits. The highest price is for a 60-year-old male smoker who needs $1 million in death benefits. The cost for the young, female nonsmoker increased to $14.58, from $14.40. The cost for the 60-year-old male smoker is $1,621.84. In 2023, the highest age included in the Policygenius index table was 55. For 55-year-old smokers, the cost of $1 million in coverage fell to $1,006.89, from $1,006.92. Credit: Adobe Stock

U.S. life insurers refilled their tanks of multi-year guaranteed annuity capital in the fourth quarter of 2023. Life insurers let sales of the products rocket up to $53 billion in the quarter, up 48% from the total recorded in the fourth quarter of 2022, after increasing just 13% in the third quarter of 2023, according to a new issuer survey compiled by Wink. MYGA sales growth was especially strong in 2022, thanks to rising interest rates. Complaints about the amount of capital needed to support the products began to bubble up in 2023. Wink survey participants said their total fourth-quarter individual deferred annuity sales increased 33%, year over year, to $105 billion. LIMRA, which conducts a separate survey that includes a wider range of products, says the issuers in its sample increased total U.S. individual annuity sales by 29%, to $115 billion.

The Financial Services Institute and its coalition partners filed an amended complaint Tuesday against the Labor Department’s new independent contrator rule, which asks the court to declare the 2024 rule invalid, prohibit its implementation and allows the 2021 independent contractor rule to remain in effect. FSI filed the amended complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas along with the Associated Builders and Contractors, the American Trucking Association, the Coalition for Workforce Innovation, the National Retail Federation, the National Federation of Independent Business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The complaint states that the 2024 rule, which Labor finalized on Jan. 9, is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act and also violates the Regulatory Flexibility Act. An FSI spokesperson told ThinkAdvisor Tuesday in an email that the amended complaint replaces the earlier complaint filed on Jan. 16, which challenged DOL’s withdrawal of the 2021 independent contractor rule. The new amended complaint, the spokesperson said, reflects “our concerns with the final DOL rule” and adds new plaintiffs. The department, according to the amended suit, ”has issued a new rule that largely repeats the Department’s previous errors and fails to remedy the confusion addressed by the 2021 Independent Contractor Rule.” The 2024...