Advisors Blog

Here are top 12 sales ideas to help you kick off 2020 to a great start! Contact your marketing brokerage manager for more information on any that interest you.

1. Life Insurance You Can Use While Living

How many of your clients are aware that today’s life insurance products offer a variety of features and benefits they can take advantage of while living?

Some policies can offer:

• A Long Term Care rider.
• A Chronic Illness rider.
• A Critical Illness rider.
• A guaranteed retirement income for clients reaching a certain age to protect against outliving your retirement assets.
• A complete refund of all premiums, in the event of early surrender.
• Tax-free deferrals and tax-free income that is available from many cash value life insurance plans that offer generous interest accumulation.

Ask your brokerage manager to discuss which living benefits might be available for your particular client.

2. Getting to Know Smokers (All Kinds)

Its been a year of changes for smokers including tobacco users and “others.”  We now have several carriers that will offer non-smoker rates to occasional marijuana users, and even one carrier that will offer non-smoker rates for very occasional cigarette smokers. And while vaping continues to make headlines, all of our carriers consider this as smoker rates for now. Check out our blog on coverage solutions for smokers and alternate tobacco users. 

3. New Program for Diabetics

Many agents don’t realize that reasonably priced life insurance is readily obtainable for diabetics with good control. John Hancock has expanded their popular Vitality wellness program to include additional benefits for Type II diabetics. Their new Aspire program can help Type II diabetics manage their condition by controlling and monitoring diet, weight, exercise and lifestyle while at the same time offering substantial discounts for life insurance.

4. Lower Premiums for Permanent Insurance Using this Strategy

The so-called Step-Premium Strategy can lower the initial premiums for permanent life insurance for older clients, while substantially increasing the ultimate IRRs (Internal Rates of Return). We’ll design a custom illustration that starts out with the lowest premium that will carry the contract for 10-15 years (or to life expectancy if you prefer) and then increase the premium in step-fashion every ten years or so. The future increases in premium can be predicted accurately (unlike term insurance conversions) and the resulting IRRs can exceed double digits at life expectancy.

5. Group Term for Older Ages

Employees approaching retirement age with group term plans may be surprised to find their death benefits automatically reduced. See our sales idea for repositioning individual term insurance as a cost effective way to obtain this coverage, possibly even at a cost savings, once income taxation is accounted for. 

6. LTC for Businesses

Businesses may be able to offer LTC as a tax deductible benefit to employees (and owners in some cases and even spouses) depending on age of insured and type of business entity. Only true LTC (that does not include a life insurance benefit) is normally deductible. See this handy guide covering tax advantages for LTC plans for businesses.

7. Tax Relief for Highly Appreciated Annuities When Purchasing LTC

Did you know that the Pension Protection Act of 2006 includes a special provision allowing highly appreciated annuities to be 1035’ed into special PPA-compliant LTC annuities -  allowing clients to wash out all tax gains when used for qualifying LTC claims while leveraging their funds for large amounts of LTC protection? Click here to learn more.

8. Work Faster with Paperless eApps and Drop Ticket Applications

Most of our carriers now offer some form of streamlined application process that eliminates all paperwork by using an online solution. In some cases, the insurance carrier will conduct an interview with the client and complete the entire application over the phone. All the agent needs to do is request the phone interview to get the process started. Be sure to check out the "Submit Your Business Electronically" section of our GBSLife Agent Portal for our list of eApps and Drop Tickets. 

9. Eliminate* Exams with Accelerated Underwriting Programs

Several of our carriers offer a “no-exam” process, especially for younger clients and smaller face amounts, although some carriers could go up to age 60 and $1,000,000 face amount. These programs are designed to cut costs and reduce the application cycle time for otherwise healthy clients who might not need an exam. 

*Note – An exam may be requested at the underwriter’s discretion. Clients should be informed that exams are “optional.” It's best to do a little pre-underwriting on these cases to see if the client is likely to pass with flying colors. Use this checklist as a starting point.

10. Turbocharge your Cases with eDelivery

Spend more time selling and less time worrying about policy placement with Prudential's ePolicy Delivery! Watch the introduction here to learn more!

11. Supplemental Disability Plans

Group LTD is a great base layer of income protection, but it has limitations and often a “cap” on monthly benefits that can leave someone with less than adequate income replacement, especially top earners. Employees may not even be aware of the gap in income protection until it's too late. Employers looking to attract/retain top talent can provide supplemental individual disability income policies to their top tier executives. For multi-life plans, Guaranteed Standard Issue no medical underwriting is possible – with multi-life discounts. Advisors can use this approach as a tool to get in front of business owners and top execs with higher incomes for potential ancillary product sales and services. Get started by using our GBS Disability Income Fact Finder. DI business is a great source of renewals for agents who write even just a handful of policies each year.

12. Enhance Your Annuity Sales with the Latest Riders and Rates

Indexed Annuities have many of the same value-added benefit riders that you’ve seen on Variable Annuities (VAs). Living Benefit Riders (referred to as GMIBs) can provide clients a higher annual payout that will last their lifetime. With little to no risk involved, Indexed Annuities are a great way to invest funds without direct exposure to the market.

Fixed Annuities are a great alternative to CDs, and perfect for clients who want guaranteed growth with no risk. Fixed annuities have a similar structure to Indexed Annuities but with three or four times the rate of return within the same time period. Click here for more information, or contact our GBS Annuity Director.