{"id":5942,"date":"2018-04-18T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/Life-Insurance-Blog\/?guid=f8856235a1370d8e8e4b835e4e71dfdc"},"modified":"2018-04-18T06:00:11","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T10:00:11","slug":"dont-overestimate-what-consumers-know-about-life-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/2018\/04\/18\/dont-overestimate-what-consumers-know-about-life-insurance\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Overestimate What Consumers Know About Life Insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Never overestimate what consumers know about life insurance.<\/p>\n<p>For example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>66 percent of consumers are unsure or don\u2019t believe benefits paid from life insurance are not taxable.<\/li>\n<li>51 percent are unsure or don\u2019t believe cash value from permanent life insurance can be used to help fund college educations, supplement retirement income or meet other financial needs.<\/li>\n<li>85 percent said that a source of tax-fee income in retirement is what they find most valuable in a financial product.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This according to the 2018 Life Insurance Needs survey from Allianz.<\/p>\n<p>Bridging the education gap about life insurance is a \u201ctremendous opportunity\u201d for agents and financial advisors, said Jason Wellmann, senior vice president of Life Insurance Sales for Allianz.<\/p>\n<p>Particularly for advisors beginning to embrace holistic planning models that address the entirety of a client\u2019s financial affairs, the role of permanent life should never be underestimated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToo many Americans with significant retirement assets are not optimizing their financial strategy because they simply don\u2019t know all of their options,\u201d Wellmann said.<\/p>\n<h3>A Question of Positioning<\/h3>\n<p>By offering a death benefit and cash value, permanent life insurance kills two birds with one stone, said insurance industry veteran Mark Teitelbaum.<\/p>\n<p>Allowed to grow, that cash value blossoms into a significant asset with advantages many people don\u2019t know about, said Teitelbaum, vice president of Advanced Markets for Axa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe talk about permanent life insurance as a smart addition to a financial plan, how to minimize taxes and build assets over time,\u201d Teitelbaum said.<\/p>\n<p>Policyholders can withdraw the earnings from the cash value tax free and to take loans against the cash value, in effect paying interest to policyholders themselves, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Permanent life insurance policies can also help owners adjust tax brackets depending on how they choose to take dividends and interest, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Permanent life insurance policies can accelerate the death benefit through the addition of long-term care or critical illness riders.<\/p>\n<p>Compared with term life, permanent life offers more value and flexibility.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTerm is for when you die, permanent is for when you are alive,\u201d said Teitelbaum.<\/p>\n<h3>Other Survey Findings<\/h3>\n<p>The Allianz survey also revealed that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>88 percent of respondents understand the death benefit component of permanent life insurance.<\/li>\n<li>75 percent of people who work with a financial professional are discussing sources of tax-free retirement income with the professional.<\/li>\n<li>70 percent of respondents are discussing ways to fund their child\u2019s college education.<\/li>\n<li>52 percent talk about financial products that offer low or no interest loans against the policy\u2019s cash value.<\/li>\n<li>Fewer than half of respondents with a financial professional have permanent life insurance and 25 percent don\u2019t currently have it, but would like to learn more about it.<\/li>\n<li>Nearly 95 percent of respondents said the ability to save enough to retire comfortably was a top priority when planning for the financial future.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><em>InsuranceNewsNet Senior Writer Cyril Tuohy has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. Cyril may be reached at cyril.tuohy@innfeedback.com.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: 8pt;\">\u00a9 Entire contents copyright 2018 by InsuranceNewsNet.com Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reprinted without the expressed written consent from InsuranceNewsNet.com.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/insurancenewsnet.com\/innarticle\/dont-overestimate-what-consumers-know-about-life-insurance\">Don&#8217;t Overestimate What Consumers Know About Life Insurance<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/insurancenewsnet.com\/\">InsuranceNewsNet<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agents might take for granted that prospects and clients know the basics about life insurance, but a survey showed that they don&#8217;t even know that benefits are not taxed.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/insurancenewsnet.com\/innarticle\/dont-overestimate-what-consumers-know-about-life-insurance\">Don&rsquo;t Overestimate What Consumers Know About Life Insurance<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/insurancenewsnet.com\/\">InsuranceNewsNet<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5944,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942\/revisions\/5944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}