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Life Insurance Sales Strategies for Today's Advisors W/ Mutual of Omaha
In this SMS Financial Solutions webinar, we explore advanced strategies in life and retirement planning designed specifically for financial advisors. The session focuses on practical, high-impact approaches to incorporating Indexed Universal Life (IUL) policies into comprehensive retirement income strategies, optimizing Social Security timing, and strengthening overall financial plans.
Our expert panel discusses innovative estate planning concepts for you to gain insight into structuring life insurance solutions that support retirement income objectives while addressing legacy and wealth transfer considerations. Emphasis is placed on presenting life insurance as part of a broader financial framework, balancing protection, controlled accumulation, and tax-advantaged growth.
Watch now to gain actionable strategies to elevate client conversations, deepen relationships, and differentiate your practice in a competitive marketplace.
Transcript
00;00;00;20 - 00;00;30;11
Mark Lyons
Well. Good morning. Welcome to this month's life webinar. I hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day. And you're in for a real treat today. My name is Mark Lyons. I'm the director of sales here at Smith Financial Solutions. And we have a very unique program. Today we're being joined by several of the people of the life team and several of the people over at, Mutual of Omaha.
00;00;30;13 - 00;00;54;20
Mark Lyons
And we're going to be sharing planning ideas with Mutual of Omaha products. It's something that we've never done before. But we thought, well, what better way to just say Happy Valentine's Day? And then to help you show your clients how to ensure the things that they love, whether it's their family, whether it's their business, whether it's their own finances.
00;00;54;22 - 00;01;19;04
Mark Lyons
We have an idea for you. So as we go through this seminar, we're going to share these ideas. And at the end, you will have the opportunity to say which idea that you thought was the best. So we'll have a little vote. If you vote, you have the opportunity to win some Mutual of Omaha swag and a drawing.
00;01;19;06 - 00;01;46;05
Mark Lyons
So I hope you'll stay tuned to the end. Just a couple of housekeeping items. We do have the ability to take, questions today. So just post them in the question and answer section. Do not put them, in the chat box. We will not see them. Our answers will probably be on line, at the end of the at the end of the session.
00;01;46;07 - 00;02;14;27
Mark Lyons
So, you know, make sure that, if you have any questions, get them in. If you don't want to ask a question during the session, if you're already somebody that's with SMS financial solutions, just go ahead. And then call your life marketer. If you want to learn more. If you're not with SMS financial solutions already, we'll have our contact information at the end of the presentation.
00;02;15;03 - 00;02;42;23
Mark Lyons
And you can either call us or email us, and we're happy to talk to you. And help us help you out, and in whatever way that we can. So joining us today is going to be the members of the the Life Department team. Yours truly will be participating. And then we have our marketing consultants, Laura Harrell, Steve Vlasic, Tom Pecoraro and Matt Hayes.
00;02;42;26 - 00;03;10;03
Mark Lyons
We also have three folks from Mutual of Omaha. So we have our RVP. Mike Moran. Joining us here today and sharing his idea. And then we have, wrongly, who's the vice president of advanced markets. And then we have Michelle Owens, who actually heads up the advanced markets department. So with that, we're going to get started.
00;03;10;06 - 00;03;35;19
Mark Lyons
So the idea I would like to share today is two is better than one. Estate planning with IUL. Question. What is better than one $2 million. Well policy from Mutual of Omaha. The answer is two $1 million IUL policies for mutual. And so let's look at this concept a little bit more.
00;03;35;22 - 00;04;07;14
Mark Lyons
With most life insurance policies. There's an idea of a band break. And as the base amount gets larger and larger on on insurance policies, at some point you have what they call a band break. And for Mutual of Omaha policies, you get a band break at $1 million of face amount. So what that means is, is that two, $1 million policies will cost the same as one $2 million policies.
00;04;07;17 - 00;04;36;13
Mark Lyons
So why is this concept important for us in planning? So really the reason is for flexibility. Now I looked up this definition the other day, for flexibility. And it's the ability of muscles, joints and tissues to move through unrestricted pain free motion, allowing for optimal movement and function. And it's the same with the life insurance. Two things that we're looking for in the future.
00;04;36;15 - 00;05;15;12
Mark Lyons
Pain free is one of them. Into optimal function. So let me go through some scenarios when you might might want to use this idea. And I'll say this one thing to, you know, many of you probably thinking that, oh, I don't want to fill out two applications for two different policies. You only need one application. So even if you have $5 million of death benefit need, you only have to fill out one application and you still have the ability to get five $1 million policies.
00;05;15;14 - 00;05;20;05
Mark Lyons
But again, let's look at why it's important.
00;05;20;07 - 00;05;49;05
Mark Lyons
So Mutual of Omaha has ideals that always come with a no cost accelerated benefit rider for chronic illness. But that policy benefit is going to be limited on a per policy basis. So what you have is the ability to, if you take out two $1 million policies at no more cost than a $2 million policy to double your benefits.
00;05;49;08 - 00;06;16;29
Mark Lyons
So that's one reason also. And related to that, you have the idea that you can choose one policy to have a long term care rider and one policy to choose the no cost chronic illness rider. And so what that does for almost a similar benefit, it's much less expensive. And then one the time comes for a claim. You have choices.
00;06;17;01 - 00;06;44;23
Mark Lyons
Would you rather pull the money out of a long term care rider, or would you rather use the chronic illness rider? It all depends. It all gives you choices. Also. You know people's needs change over time. So you may want to transfer one of those policies to a trust or a charity or other third party. So just look let's look at the the charitable example.
00;06;44;26 - 00;07;11;14
Mark Lyons
You know, people's needs change. They don't need $2 million of death benefit anymore. They only need $1 million. So what you can do is give the $1 million policy and keep $1 million policy for. For the benefit of your family. But when you give the policy to a charity, all the premium payments that you're going to be making in the future are going to be tax deductible.
00;07;11;16 - 00;07;34;01
Mark Lyons
So that's an idea. So if you want to fund a trust, maybe say you have the one trust, that's for the benefit of one family member and another trust that's going to be for the benefit of a different family member. You can transfer those policies to two different trusts. Or the idea is to transfer to a third party.
00;07;34;03 - 00;07;56;24
Mark Lyons
Let's just say you have two children and you can't afford the premium payments anymore, and you don't need the death benefit, but you've been paying on it for a long time. And maybe the children are saying, well, we'd like to keep the death benefit in case you pass away. So if you have one policy, you can give it to one child.
00;07;56;27 - 00;08;20;26
Mark Lyons
And if you have the other policy, you can give it to the other child. And maybe they make the premium payments for you. And so it's b essentially becomes their policy. Or if you want to, you know, settle the policy, you have that ability to perhaps it's changing business needs. Perhaps a business owned a $2 million key man policy.
00;08;20;29 - 00;08;55;15
Mark Lyons
You know, a lot of times the at the end of babying in a period of time when the worker, sticks with the business, they may kick that policy out. To that employee, just to say thanks for for being around for the last 20 years. But if you have two policies rather than one, maybe it's time to kick one policy out, you know, after a period of time, but then you still have the ability to incentivize the employee to stay around for a little bit longer.
00;08;55;17 - 00;09;34;15
Mark Lyons
And then at the end of that term, you kick out the other policy to that person. And then one last idea, and this one's a little bit different. But Mutual of Omaha has the income advantage accumulation policy. And also they have a more, guaranteed death benefit type policy. That's called life protection advantage. And so rather than just have a $2 million death benefit, you know, you really have to pick, you know, where are you going to be at accumulating policy or are you going to be a purely death benefit policy?
00;09;34;17 - 00;10;06;19
Mark Lyons
Maybe you have both. So you could split it and, to $1 million policies, you could be using one of the policies for accumulation purposes. And another one just to make sure you have the the additional death benefit that you need. And so very you know, it works it very well because one of the the keys to accumulating money, you know, a life insurance policy is to reduce that death benefit as much as you can for the premium payment that you're going to be making.
00;10;06;21 - 00;10;34;24
Ron Lee
All right. Hello, everybody. My idea today revolves around married clients who'd be looking to Social Security as a source of income should one spouse pass away. And there's two situations where your client's misunderstanding of how Social Security actually works might cause them some big problems in the future. So the first situation is very problematic for couples with young children.
00;10;34;26 - 00;11;12;03
Ron Lee
Let's say your clients are worried about providing for children. Should one of the worker spouses pass away? They would receive Social Security, right? Yes. And generally, if a spouse that qualifies for Social Security dies when their children are young, the surviving spouse spouse does receive a benefit, and the children themselves receive a benefit. And that sounds great, except, benefits to that spouse stop when the child reaches age 16, unless that child is disabled and the disability happened before they were 22.
00;11;12;06 - 00;11;38;14
Ron Lee
Now, I don't know about anybody on the call here today, but my kids didn't get off the payroll at age 16, so that is not a great solution. In addition, the benefits to the child then would actually stop when they turn 18 unless they're still in high school. Then they would receive it until their age 19. So what do they do in the meantime?
00;11;38;16 - 00;12;03;24
Ron Lee
Isn't there going to be a significant shortfall in the amount of income that they're receiving? But not only that, there's also this question about the earnings limit. How how do we handle that? We know that if they earn more than $24,480 in 2026, for example, they're going to lose a dollar of benefits for every $2 that they earn above that limit.
00;12;03;26 - 00;12;33;26
Ron Lee
And so maybe Social Security just by itself isn't a great strategy for people with young children. Then the second situation may be even more misunderstood than the first. What happens when both spouses are receiving Social Security retirement benefits and one of them passes away? Well, the answer is that the survivor gets the greater of the two benefits, but not both benefits.
00;12;33;29 - 00;13;11;02
Ron Lee
So while it's good that they receive the higher check, oftentimes their living expenses may continue on the same pace as they were before. For example, the mortgage payment doesn't go down. The utilities are no less expensive. So what should they be thinking about doing to replace their income? The answer, of course, is life insurance. We all know that everyone with a spouse and children needs to make sure that they buy enough life insurance to take care of the family, replace the income, pay the mortgage, send the kids to college, and so forth.
00;13;11;05 - 00;13;38;24
Ron Lee
But are these young couples considering that there will be a period of time when they won't be receiving assistance from Social Security? Likewise, after retirement? Are they really expecting that Social Security, which for most people isn't enough anyway, will somehow magically be enough, and sufficient for their needs? Once one of those checks goes away? Of course, a proper needs analysis is always best.
00;13;39;01 - 00;14;06;16
Ron Lee
But in those cases where you just need a quick number for the clients looking to replace a lost retirement check, just take the amount of the lesser check and multiply it by the number of months that they want to protect the income. For example, if the lesser benefit were $1,000 a month and they wanted to protect the income for 20 years, that would be 1000 times 12 times 20 or $240,000.
00;14;06;18 - 00;14;35;15
Ron Lee
It's a quick and easy way to make sure that your clients don't suffer financially from the loss of a check. So who should you be talking about with these ideas? Well, for the first idea, everybody who has kids and might depend on Social Security for the second idea. Think about everyone at or near retirement medicine clients. Clients with retirement plans to rollover, those to an estate planning, and so on.
00;14;35;18 - 00;14;51;11
Ron Lee
Your clients need you to help them understand where their plans fall short. So regardless of why people initially came to you, make sure you bring this up. Their loved ones will thank you someday.
00;14;51;13 - 00;15;18;10
Tom Pecoraro
Hello, everyone. Tom Pecoraro here. Senior market sales. Glad to be participating in this. Wanted to kind of start with, I you all was a strategy and not an investment. We can design the best policies in the world, but if you position them wrong, the case dies. Or even worse, it gets mis sold. IUL isn't about, built to to win on one category.
00;15;18;11 - 00;15;54;25
Tom Pecoraro
It solves three problems at the same time. So, first and foremost, protection. First, everything begins here. This is life insurance. Meaning that death benefit. That's, that lasts a lifetime. And that benefit passes tax free to beneficiaries. So before we ever talk about growth or before we talk about accumulation or solving the the core financial risk every client has, and that's premature death protection isn't the only one feature of an ideal.
00;15;54;26 - 00;16;25;29
Tom Pecoraro
It's at its foundation. So number two controlled growth. Now on top of that protection we layer growth right. So cash value that's linked to a market indexed. But there's a key difference here from you know investments. And that's a zero floor. So when the market goes negative the policy doesn't lose due to market performance. So now that also then leads to number three which we talk about in IU wills.
00;16;25;29 - 00;16;55;11
Tom Pecoraro
Is this the third problem. Why you all solved this. And that's the tax efficiency. So again going back to as long as it structured properly clients can access cash value through policy loans. And that means perpetual tax free income without triggering a taxable event. So the big thing we want to talk about here is, is when you put it all together you've got protection, controlled growth, tax advantage access.
00;16;55;13 - 00;17;25;09
Tom Pecoraro
So this is not an investment project. This is a financial strategy. So yes you don't get full market upside. What you get is participation without die. And side clients aren't trying to beat the market here. They're trying to avoid market damage. So I you all isn't where you chase returns. It's where you protect gains when clients are looking for upside without downside tax efficiency and lifetime perfection.
00;17;25;12 - 00;17;47;16
Tom Pecoraro
Your role isn't to show them an investment illustration. It's to show them a strategy. So the market bucket is where clients go for growth. But it comes with volatility. Bank bucket. This is where they go for safety. But growth is minimal. So when we talk about the bucket strategies the I you all sit in the middle and it's unique.
00;17;47;17 - 00;18;09;26
Tom Pecoraro
It provides protection controlled growth and tax leverage. Your role isn't to show them in an investment illustration. It's to show them a strategy. So the three position anchors strategy over product protection over performance structure drives outcome. Thank you and have a great day.
00;18;09;29 - 00;18;32;21
Michelle Owens
Hi my name is Michelle and I appreciate you guys letting me participate in your contest. I want to share a sales concept that I think you guys can use with really any retirement income planning situation. It might even start with a client who's asking you about Social Security, or they have a long term care question. Maybe a medicine question.
00;18;32;21 - 00;19;09;21
Michelle Owens
Right? It's something to me that you'll be able to discuss or get into. What is their retirement income strategy? And when you can carry that conversation over into looking at retirement income and to looking at what they've been able to accumulate, what I like about that is you're going to be able to figure out who feels secure with their current retirement income plan, and you'll probably be able to identify with some of those clients that feel good about where they're at, if they're going to have excess assets when they have those excess assets, sorry.
00;19;09;24 - 00;19;29;05
Michelle Owens
They should be talking about, then what do they want to do with those? Is it leaving a legacy to their kids? Because a lot of people, when you have single, you know, individuals or married couples, most of them with their legacy plan, look at what they want to leave to their kids and how they want to do it.
00;19;29;07 - 00;19;59;14
Michelle Owens
Unfortunately, what happens, maybe before they've talked to you is they don't understand when assets pass to their kids. Some are going to be more efficient than others. And so I want to help you guys talk about and have a conversation to educate clients as to a real secure way to not only have that retirement income, but a secure way to set up a legacy plan when they're looking at their qualified retirement plan assets.
00;19;59;16 - 00;20;27;21
Michelle Owens
A lot of times they don't understand that the IRA, that they have the 401 K that they have, that they just assume will pass to their kids with anything left over. They don't know that if they're in an estate tax situation, that asset will be hit with estate taxes. Their beneficiaries, when they inherit that asset, they will owe all that tax deferral, at that beneficiary's tax rate.
00;20;27;23 - 00;20;53;14
Michelle Owens
They also, with the Secure act now in place, will have to pay those taxes quicker. The Secure act kind of shed new light on this concept. A lot of people talked about this as wealth transfer or capital transfer. We like to call it secure transfer because of the Secure act. And this new ten year tax collection rule that they put on most beneficiaries nowadays.
00;20;53;16 - 00;21;36;04
Michelle Owens
So if you have clients, let's in this case consider this client. Her name's Judy. And we'll say she has a sizable estate. We'll put her in a situation where as you're talking to her, you start figuring out she will probably owe estate tax, and she will probably have excess qualified assets to pass on to her kids. So if you talk to her and she understands the amount of taxes that could be owed and could be, you know, taken away from her children, go to the government instead of her children, she would be interested in talking to you about ways to make that legacy plan more efficient.
00;21;36;07 - 00;22;00;15
Michelle Owens
When we look at this example, if we just assume and we're going to be conservative here, that she has around 300,000 of excess assets. If that estate of hers is going to be susceptible to estate tax, you can see right now in our current tax environment, she could the estate would, oh, 40% of that value at her death.
00;22;00;15 - 00;22;27;18
Michelle Owens
So she would be giving up potentially passing on 120,000, to her kids of that IRA right off the top. Then let's assume the kids that are inheriting this, if they're in a high tax bracket as well, the income tax that would be owed federally. So I'm not even looking right now at state income tax or state inheritance tax issues like we have here.
00;22;27;21 - 00;22;56;17
Michelle Owens
We're just looking federal. That could be another hundred and 11,000 off that IRA. So you're looking at a legacy plan where she thought she was passing on 300,000, and now she's potentially only giving her kids less than a third of that. This is where to me, if you were talking to Jane and you said, what if I could make sure that your kids inherited an asset that had no market risk, that had no tax risk?
00;22;56;19 - 00;23;42;05
Michelle Owens
And day one, I could triple the size of this, IRA excess that you have. How would you feel about that? Would you want to talk more about it? I think this is a good strategy because you're not only securing her legacy, you're making her feel better. You're giving her peace of mind. So with life insurance, what I like to look at, and that's a strategy that I use here, is to say if we took that 300,000 in Jane's case and we used a spear, something that would guarantee those annual premium payments into life insurance that spear right now could produce, a little over 18,000 a year, based on her life, the payments.
00;23;42;05 - 00;24;04;14
Michelle Owens
And I want to be fair with this. If I use the after tax amount, assuming she's in a high tax bracket as well, I could get a little over $11,600 to use towards a face amount for this policy and our life protection product. That product is going to give her a much higher death benefit tax free to her kids.
00;24;04;16 - 00;24;37;00
Michelle Owens
For guaranteed tell she's 90 for a low premium cost. That's what this product is known for is the low cost. With this nice guarantee out to age 90. So we look at this, we're able to turn 300,000 of a qualified asset that was open to market risk, had significant tax risk. And turn that into something that's, guaranteed 970,000 of tax free death benefit for her legacy plan.
00;24;37;03 - 00;25;03;29
Michelle Owens
With this, it also gives her the ability and flexibility to change your mind because our product, the life protection product, it allows individuals to have a guaranteed refund option. It's for anyone age 60 and under that they can actually get a full refund of premium in years 20 through 25. And so for her, if you think about it, we purchase this when she's 60.
00;25;04;01 - 00;25;27;09
Michelle Owens
She is able to actually get full refund of premium if she changes her mind. She also has that chronic illness and terminal illness writer that are put on the policy free of charge as well. If we wanted to get into discussions on, you know, how to structure this with an eyelet, how to maybe make it a little more secure, she could add a living benefit of an LTC rider.
00;25;27;15 - 00;25;53;16
Michelle Owens
There's a lot of options here for her, but what I love about it is we've secured that legacy plan for her, as well as maybe giving her the ability in retirement to spend a little more, you know, feel better about, her retirement income, knowing that she has her kids taken care of. What I wanted to cover last and closing is just you guys have access to a lot of different tools.
00;25;53;16 - 00;26;19;04
Michelle Owens
I don't know if you've been out on our sales professional access page, but the concept that I talked about, secure transfer, there's tools there for you. There's a seminar that you can use that has, client scripting. It's been approved for client use. We have fliers that are available case studies that you can show to clients. Each of our sales concepts, we try to put tools out there.
00;26;19;04 - 00;26;33;01
Michelle Owens
So there's a number of different concepts. If you guys have questions on any of them, feel free to give us a call and let us know. We're happy to discuss your specific client in detail. Thank you.
00;26;33;03 - 00;26;54;14
Matt Hays
I'm Matt Hayes from our life insurance team here at Sims. And I'm going to be talking about Dan Fisher reviews today. So, when should a beneficiary review be done? At minimum, they should be done annually. You can feel free to do them whenever you'd like throughout the year, but at minimum, I would do it annual, either at the end of the year, at the beginning of the year.
00;26;54;14 - 00;27;07;13
Matt Hays
It's a good time frame. Some people like to do it, right after tax season, maybe after the EP, it really is up to you. But at least once a year at minimum. What would be the cause of the reason.
00;27;07;13 - 00;27;08;29
Matt Hays
For being six year review?
00;27;09;00 - 00;27;38;09
Matt Hays
Well, things such as a marriage or divorce, you know, we've all seen statistics out there, varying numbers, but roughly, they say about 50% of all marriages these days end in divorce. So why would you want your money ultimately going to somebody that is, that you're no longer married to any, birth, adoption, death of a beneficiary or other, opportunities?
00;27;38;11 - 00;27;59;29
Matt Hays
Now, here. It's a mess. We have a lot of advisors that work with the senior market, predominantly on the Medicare side. And, how many folks have had new grandchildren born in the past year? So it's an opportunity to review that with the client and dig a little bit deeper into, into their lives and how you can best be of assistance.
00;28;00;03 - 00;28;26;27
Matt Hays
There's also lifestyle changes. Maybe you've had a new job that's brought on more money. Maybe you've brought on or, been the recipient of an inheritance or, there's lottery winners now, I myself, I've never been one, but, I know those folks are out there. And then also wills and trust. You know, that adds another reason why you should review beneficiaries.
00;28;26;29 - 00;28;40;06
Matt Hays
Maybe there's been a move involved. So many different things are opportunities to really kind of sit down and almost do a fact finder with your current clients that you already have.
00;28;40;09 - 00;28;54;08
Matt Hays
So what should you reveal? Well, quite frankly, everything. Nothing's off the table, but I think you should offer to look at any life insurance policy, no matter if you were the age of record or not, you know, it's an.
00;28;54;08 - 00;28;55;12
Matt Hays
Opportunity for you to.
00;28;55;12 - 00;29;25;16
Matt Hays
Kind of, take a peek under that, under the table and really see what somebody has and peel that onion back. You know, you can use so many different, narratives or adages, but it's true. Looking at somebody's life insurance policy helps you figure out maybe there's a discrepancy here or something that I could do where I could offer a policy that they have a definitions again, and maybe it's not life insurance, maybe it's a long term care plan.
00;29;25;16 - 00;29;49;12
Matt Hays
You know, all different things that as a mess, can help you out with and lousy an opportunity to build rapport and potentially uncover that new sale, which I just spoke about. We all know and we all talk about stickiness. You know, the more policies you have with somebody, the more opportunities there are to, create where they're going to be advocates for your business.
00;29;49;14 - 00;30;05;10
Matt Hays
And, you know, our folks over at, United Mutual of Omaha, we do all sorts of business with them, not only on the life insurance side, but we have some other, areas of business as well, and just a few other items of note here. When you do the.
00;30;05;11 - 00;30;06;15
Matt Hays
Beneficiary review.
00;30;06;15 - 00;30;29;02
Matt Hays
You're putting your clients at ease. It's one less thing for them to worry about because they've made sure that they're up to date on everything. And it's a good time to remind your clients that life insurance proceeds to a beneficiary. Don't go through probate and generally and often tax free, and you want to make sure to remind your clients.
00;30;29;02 - 00;30;38;08
Matt Hays
And that's a good reminder for advisors as well. Don't forget about those contingent beneficiaries. Be prepared and have a plan even in.
00;30;38;08 - 00;30;39;12
Matt Hays
Depth.
00;30;39;15 - 00;30;46;26
Matt Hays
You know, take care of what you can while you can. So, thank you for joining us today.
00;30;46;28 - 00;31;12;08
Laura Harral
Hi, everyone. Laura, with senior market sales, financial solutions, my sales idea for the day is using Trump accounts as a door opener. So there's been a lot of buzz about the children's Trump accounts as part of the one big beautiful bill. What they are is any any U.S. citizen child under the age of 18 can have one of these accounts.
00;31;12;10 - 00;31;46;11
Laura Harral
But the really important part piece of this is any child be born between January 1st of 2025 and December 31st of 2028. You can get $1,000 of seed money, that is put into this, account. So what they're really designed for is kind of a starter retirement or savings account with tax deferred growth. Parents or guardians manage the account as custodians until the child turns 18.
00;31;46;13 - 00;32;16;08
Laura Harral
You individuals can contribute up to $5,000 per year, and employers can contribute up to 2500. And then some employers are actually matching an additional $2,500. Parents can sign up using the IRS form for five four, seven, and the link is in this. So that's who can sign up.
00;32;16;11 - 00;32;44;29
Laura Harral
But what I really want to talk about is the differences, the Trump accounts versus talking to your clients about using life insurance on children as an alternative to the Trump account. So the pros of using life insurance, it does provide a death benefit. Life insurance is always life insurance first. We can design life insurance using IU, ALS as overfunded.
00;32;45;01 - 00;33;11;03
Laura Harral
And so all of those, cash accumulation can grow inside of the policy. The policy owner can take out cash later on as a tax free distribution. The withdrawals can be used for anything. They don't have to be for college, first time home purchases, retirement savings or other qualified uses. So, you know, think about, think outside the box.
00;33;11;03 - 00;33;37;16
Laura Harral
When you're using an IQ goal for cash accumulation, you could maybe use it if your child wanted to start a business when they grow up. Maybe if they want to buy their first car, they can use it for college if they want to. But it doesn't have to be limited to only certain items. There's no penalty for taking cash out early versus when you use a retirement account and take cash out early.
00;33;37;16 - 00;34;02;09
Laura Harral
There potentially is taxable consequences and penalties, but you have to pay using an IU. Well, there's no penalties. The other piece that I really like on getting insurance on for children is that guaranteed insure ability piece. I don't think people really talk about it enough. That guaranteed insure ability is huge. When you take out life insurance on a child, it protects them.
00;34;02;11 - 00;34;32;04
Laura Harral
If anything should happen to them in the future, think about how many children potentially have, diabetes later on in life. Mental health issues. Come down, come have cancer. You know, all of those health issues that maybe you don't think about children having, but it protects them. They also have living benefits, such as chronic and critical illness writers that are automatically built into the life insurance policy.
00;34;32;06 - 00;34;58;11
Laura Harral
And then contributions aren't limited, like on a Trump account. So there's no maximum amount that you can put in. They do have to follow financial suitability guidelines. And we can work with you on structuring levels that are going to be beneficial for both the client, the child, and making sure that they're structured the right way and how the plans want them.
00;34;58;14 - 00;35;18;29
Laura Harral
But I think the biggest pieces, there's tons of options, and you're not limited to the constraints of just a retirement account. And that's why I love talking about, life insurance for children. And I think it's a great door opener. Thanks for joining us.
00;35;19;01 - 00;35;46;27
Michael Marasco
Hello, everyone. Mike Mariscal with Mutual of Omaha here to talk to you today about some ideas. When you're talking to people about their final expense, obviously we have our Living Promise product, but why not take in consideration an alternative that may offer a more compelling solution for your customers? Let's talk a little bit about our living promise and then take a look at our Are you Well Express product on the Living Promise.
00;35;46;27 - 00;36;09;21
Michael Marasco
This is obviously a very steady plan for us. It's a great product. We will issue that from ages 45 to 85 for the for the plan that will go up to $50,000. If they do not qualify for that, that will bring the issue ages down to a maximum of 80 and to a maximum amount of $20,000. These are very good policies.
00;36;09;23 - 00;36;36;12
Michael Marasco
They're guaranteed to age 100 if the premiums paid. The, thought behind this is that many times people not are not looking to just purchase the death benefit. So we do have some living promise. Benefit plan riders on here. One cost rider is an accidental death benefit rider. And we have some no cost riders. Accidental death benefit rider for terminal illness or nursing home confinement rider.
00;36;36;14 - 00;37;02;13
Michael Marasco
These are very good, but they're a little bit limited in scope compared with the, index Universal Life product that we're going to talk about. One of the things that I think is very important in for somebody to take a look at when you are talking about the final expense is the face amounts. Okay. A lot of times when you're talking about final expense, people are thinking, you know, cost of bearing, you know, things of that nature.
00;37;02;13 - 00;37;32;03
Michael Marasco
But there might be some other considerations in there. And some of these people who are talking to you about final expense know that they have more than those type of expenses deal with. But when they think final expense, they're thinking burial. And hopefully I can do some other things to help cover some of those other expenses. Now, if we take a look at this index, universal life Express, we can see that we have substantial opportunity for a larger face amount of the life insurance.
00;37;32;06 - 00;37;57;18
Michael Marasco
Now let's understand that realistically, people looking for final expense are probably going to be more in that, you know, 50 plus to 75 age range. So in here, when you're looking at a maximum amount on the, living promise, potentially $50,000, now, you have a lot more room to work with here as far as space, amount scale.
00;37;57;21 - 00;38;34;28
Michael Marasco
And this is a very good policy. It is an index universal life policy. There's plenty of opportunities to access cash and have them grow and utilize the cash value. These policies are also guaranteed for 20 years or until the person turns age 80. There's also a lot more, value to the no cost riders. There are living benefit riders for terminal, chronic and critical illness so they can accelerate a portion of that death benefit to cover those waivers of surrender charges for partial withdrawals and guaranteed mature ability rider.
00;38;35;00 - 00;39;05;25
Michael Marasco
And there is left guard riders, meaning if they decide to pull income out of this policy, it will never lapse, causing them the taxation situation. So there's a lot more to look at in this policy than the, final expense policy alone. We do have some cost riders on this policy as well. However, I think those aren't necessarily things that need to be added on for this product to work very well.
00;39;05;28 - 00;39;27;16
Michael Marasco
So when I want to wrap this up, I always take a look at, you know, what are the advantages of the, are you early versus or, living promise, higher face amounts. That is the number one, number one thing to look at. We have a broader scope of living benefit riders on their vehicle at no cost and even at the cost riders.
00;39;27;19 - 00;39;51;21
Michael Marasco
And if you were to do a look in a comparison, you were going to potentially get more coverage for a similar outlay of premium dollars. If you run these things, you're going to probably find that, the discrepancy in the value of the premium dollar is not as much as you would think. In many times, it's often less to utilize this.
00;39;51;28 - 00;40;24;02
Michael Marasco
Are you well, express product. So that is my idea is to have that discussion about that. Are you in a league when you're talking to people with the final expense? The other thing I want to mention, in keeping with, Mark's theme of Valentine's Day, most of these people who you were speaking with are likely to have grandchildren, so why not make that pitch for a children's whole life policy at the same time, you're talking to them about their final expenses because they can purchase if their grandparents, these policies on their children.
00;40;24;04 - 00;41;00;05
Steve Valasek
Thank you for your time. Good afternoon everyone. Steve Vlasic, life insurance marketing consultant here at Senior Market Sales. We're gonna talk about redefining your life insurance with long term care riders. We dive into a lot of policy reviews with people and tell them the importance of going into their current existing clients and working with them on what they currently have, and reviewing it and seeing what they have for the ability to make their products a little bit better, give their products, their their ages, a little bit more, acuity, their clients a little bit more, ability to do something with those policies.
00;41;00;07 - 00;41;26;00
Steve Valasek
What we're gonna talk about is an individual has an existing life insurance policy with roughly about $75,000 in cash value in the product, the pay about 200 bucks a month and have roughly a $200,000 baby with no living benefits. As we know, a lot of the older policies that have been around for 20, 30, 40 years, they don't have a lot of the benefits that majority of our new products do.
00;41;26;03 - 00;41;46;28
Steve Valasek
So being able to put them and repurpose them into a new policy is a big advantage just in that, let alone anything else that can happen within that policy. So this individual, they don't really have a life insurance need anymore. The kids are out of the house. We going into retirement? I have the house has paid off.
00;41;46;28 - 00;42;05;15
Steve Valasek
They have assets, but they really understand what it lights insurance is and what it can provide. But if they're going to keep it, they want it to be able to provide and be as maximized as it can. So what we're talking about here is an individual at 65 years old, like I said, doesn't really need life insurance.
00;42;05;17 - 00;42;30;13
Steve Valasek
They don't have a long have LTC, but they truly see the need to understand the importance of what long term care can do to them and where it can come into play for them. You know, in their family, in their in their livelihood, because they've seen the cost of care, whether it be with family, friends, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, they understand what the need is.
00;42;30;15 - 00;42;55;29
Steve Valasek
And they're concerned with paying both of LTC and maintaining the life insurance policies. They want to have the life insurance. They understand what the life insurance is for what it can provide in regards to a tax free death benefit and helping, whether you know that he predeceased his spouse or it goes directly to his kids, understands that, is concerned with the cost of long term care because he knows long term care premiums are not cheap anymore.
00;42;56;01 - 00;43;18;10
Steve Valasek
They are definitely much more than what they used to be. So what we're going to look at is taking and doing a 1035 exchange and exchanging that cash values in the existing policy. We're going to use the protection advantage are you will and current life policies. Is the cash value using that $75,000 from the existing policy bringing that over.
00;43;18;10 - 00;43;41;20
Steve Valasek
Now we're just looking at just a standard standard rate for this. These are the numbers we used. Didn't dive in anything crazy with preferred preferred plus just an individual. It's in good health is is able to go through the underwriting is able to get coverage. We looked at the 75,000 replacing the existing policy. And he chose to maintain that 200 bucks a month and 200 bucks a month, he said.
00;43;41;20 - 00;44;02;07
Steve Valasek
I've been paying it for years. May as well keep it up. We'll see what it comes back in and see if we need to look at, you know, changing anything. So went through ran these numbers on this particular individual. We were able to turn by repurposing that life insurance. We were able to put this individual in a much better position moving forward than they are right now.
00;44;02;07 - 00;44;27;04
Steve Valasek
With the current life insurance. By doing it, we were able to provide a $250,000 death benefit. And on top of that, we through a long term care rider on there that's going to provide $10,000 a month for LTC for 25 months. So not only were were we able to increase his death benefit substantially, we're adding on that long term care.
00;44;27;07 - 00;44;46;05
Steve Valasek
He's been paying it. He's got 75,000 in cash in there. And so our people that are paying 200 bucks a month, what he's been paying for years and putting him in a much better position as far as is going to work a lot better for him moving forward. Plus, the other nice thing is we're adding $150,000 death benefit to an already good policy.
00;44;46;08 - 00;45;05;24
Steve Valasek
So going through and looking at your client's client base and looking at your eight, you're seeing what they have available for you is a great way to leverage some of the new products that have been coming out that are available in the long term care market space to, to help your clients grow. That's what I have for you today.
00;45;05;26 - 00;45;11;11
Steve Valasek
Please give me a call. See? New market salesman. Thanks for your time.
00;45;11;13 - 00;45;38;04
Mark Lyons
I want to thank everyone for joining us today. I hope you found the ideas that we shared valuable. And you're able to institute them in your practice if you have any questions at all. We're here to help. You can reach us by phone. You can reach us by email. If you already have a life marketer, you can contact him or her as well.
00;45;38;06 - 00;46;03;05
Mark Lyons
If it's, more of a technical question, for the advanced sales team at at Mutual of Omaha, we can get you in touch with them as well. So we really enjoyed doing this, this webinar today. It's, something I, I'm hoping that we'll we'll do again in the future. It's different. It's fun.
00;46;03;08 - 00;46;35;02
Mark Lyons
And, it was, it was a really rewarding experience. And I hope you found that to. And so now it's time for you to cast your vote for the idea, that you like best or you think was the best. You have eight ideas to choose from. As a reminder, as a reminder, if you do vote, you will have the ability to win some Mutual of Omaha swag.
00;46;35;05 - 00;46;57;13
Mark Lyons
We'll contact you, and to let you know that, that you won that. So please, please pick the idea that, you like best. And we appreciate everyone for joining us today. And thank you again. We hope to see you next month. On Another Life webinar from SMS Financial Solutions.
Mark Lyons
Well. Good morning. Welcome to this month's life webinar. I hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day. And you're in for a real treat today. My name is Mark Lyons. I'm the director of sales here at Smith Financial Solutions. And we have a very unique program. Today we're being joined by several of the people of the life team and several of the people over at, Mutual of Omaha.
00;00;30;13 - 00;00;54;20
Mark Lyons
And we're going to be sharing planning ideas with Mutual of Omaha products. It's something that we've never done before. But we thought, well, what better way to just say Happy Valentine's Day? And then to help you show your clients how to ensure the things that they love, whether it's their family, whether it's their business, whether it's their own finances.
00;00;54;22 - 00;01;19;04
Mark Lyons
We have an idea for you. So as we go through this seminar, we're going to share these ideas. And at the end, you will have the opportunity to say which idea that you thought was the best. So we'll have a little vote. If you vote, you have the opportunity to win some Mutual of Omaha swag and a drawing.
00;01;19;06 - 00;01;46;05
Mark Lyons
So I hope you'll stay tuned to the end. Just a couple of housekeeping items. We do have the ability to take, questions today. So just post them in the question and answer section. Do not put them, in the chat box. We will not see them. Our answers will probably be on line, at the end of the at the end of the session.
00;01;46;07 - 00;02;14;27
Mark Lyons
So, you know, make sure that, if you have any questions, get them in. If you don't want to ask a question during the session, if you're already somebody that's with SMS financial solutions, just go ahead. And then call your life marketer. If you want to learn more. If you're not with SMS financial solutions already, we'll have our contact information at the end of the presentation.
00;02;15;03 - 00;02;42;23
Mark Lyons
And you can either call us or email us, and we're happy to talk to you. And help us help you out, and in whatever way that we can. So joining us today is going to be the members of the the Life Department team. Yours truly will be participating. And then we have our marketing consultants, Laura Harrell, Steve Vlasic, Tom Pecoraro and Matt Hayes.
00;02;42;26 - 00;03;10;03
Mark Lyons
We also have three folks from Mutual of Omaha. So we have our RVP. Mike Moran. Joining us here today and sharing his idea. And then we have, wrongly, who's the vice president of advanced markets. And then we have Michelle Owens, who actually heads up the advanced markets department. So with that, we're going to get started.
00;03;10;06 - 00;03;35;19
Mark Lyons
So the idea I would like to share today is two is better than one. Estate planning with IUL. Question. What is better than one $2 million. Well policy from Mutual of Omaha. The answer is two $1 million IUL policies for mutual. And so let's look at this concept a little bit more.
00;03;35;22 - 00;04;07;14
Mark Lyons
With most life insurance policies. There's an idea of a band break. And as the base amount gets larger and larger on on insurance policies, at some point you have what they call a band break. And for Mutual of Omaha policies, you get a band break at $1 million of face amount. So what that means is, is that two, $1 million policies will cost the same as one $2 million policies.
00;04;07;17 - 00;04;36;13
Mark Lyons
So why is this concept important for us in planning? So really the reason is for flexibility. Now I looked up this definition the other day, for flexibility. And it's the ability of muscles, joints and tissues to move through unrestricted pain free motion, allowing for optimal movement and function. And it's the same with the life insurance. Two things that we're looking for in the future.
00;04;36;15 - 00;05;15;12
Mark Lyons
Pain free is one of them. Into optimal function. So let me go through some scenarios when you might might want to use this idea. And I'll say this one thing to, you know, many of you probably thinking that, oh, I don't want to fill out two applications for two different policies. You only need one application. So even if you have $5 million of death benefit need, you only have to fill out one application and you still have the ability to get five $1 million policies.
00;05;15;14 - 00;05;20;05
Mark Lyons
But again, let's look at why it's important.
00;05;20;07 - 00;05;49;05
Mark Lyons
So Mutual of Omaha has ideals that always come with a no cost accelerated benefit rider for chronic illness. But that policy benefit is going to be limited on a per policy basis. So what you have is the ability to, if you take out two $1 million policies at no more cost than a $2 million policy to double your benefits.
00;05;49;08 - 00;06;16;29
Mark Lyons
So that's one reason also. And related to that, you have the idea that you can choose one policy to have a long term care rider and one policy to choose the no cost chronic illness rider. And so what that does for almost a similar benefit, it's much less expensive. And then one the time comes for a claim. You have choices.
00;06;17;01 - 00;06;44;23
Mark Lyons
Would you rather pull the money out of a long term care rider, or would you rather use the chronic illness rider? It all depends. It all gives you choices. Also. You know people's needs change over time. So you may want to transfer one of those policies to a trust or a charity or other third party. So just look let's look at the the charitable example.
00;06;44;26 - 00;07;11;14
Mark Lyons
You know, people's needs change. They don't need $2 million of death benefit anymore. They only need $1 million. So what you can do is give the $1 million policy and keep $1 million policy for. For the benefit of your family. But when you give the policy to a charity, all the premium payments that you're going to be making in the future are going to be tax deductible.
00;07;11;16 - 00;07;34;01
Mark Lyons
So that's an idea. So if you want to fund a trust, maybe say you have the one trust, that's for the benefit of one family member and another trust that's going to be for the benefit of a different family member. You can transfer those policies to two different trusts. Or the idea is to transfer to a third party.
00;07;34;03 - 00;07;56;24
Mark Lyons
Let's just say you have two children and you can't afford the premium payments anymore, and you don't need the death benefit, but you've been paying on it for a long time. And maybe the children are saying, well, we'd like to keep the death benefit in case you pass away. So if you have one policy, you can give it to one child.
00;07;56;27 - 00;08;20;26
Mark Lyons
And if you have the other policy, you can give it to the other child. And maybe they make the premium payments for you. And so it's b essentially becomes their policy. Or if you want to, you know, settle the policy, you have that ability to perhaps it's changing business needs. Perhaps a business owned a $2 million key man policy.
00;08;20;29 - 00;08;55;15
Mark Lyons
You know, a lot of times the at the end of babying in a period of time when the worker, sticks with the business, they may kick that policy out. To that employee, just to say thanks for for being around for the last 20 years. But if you have two policies rather than one, maybe it's time to kick one policy out, you know, after a period of time, but then you still have the ability to incentivize the employee to stay around for a little bit longer.
00;08;55;17 - 00;09;34;15
Mark Lyons
And then at the end of that term, you kick out the other policy to that person. And then one last idea, and this one's a little bit different. But Mutual of Omaha has the income advantage accumulation policy. And also they have a more, guaranteed death benefit type policy. That's called life protection advantage. And so rather than just have a $2 million death benefit, you know, you really have to pick, you know, where are you going to be at accumulating policy or are you going to be a purely death benefit policy?
00;09;34;17 - 00;10;06;19
Mark Lyons
Maybe you have both. So you could split it and, to $1 million policies, you could be using one of the policies for accumulation purposes. And another one just to make sure you have the the additional death benefit that you need. And so very you know, it works it very well because one of the the keys to accumulating money, you know, a life insurance policy is to reduce that death benefit as much as you can for the premium payment that you're going to be making.
00;10;06;21 - 00;10;34;24
Ron Lee
All right. Hello, everybody. My idea today revolves around married clients who'd be looking to Social Security as a source of income should one spouse pass away. And there's two situations where your client's misunderstanding of how Social Security actually works might cause them some big problems in the future. So the first situation is very problematic for couples with young children.
00;10;34;26 - 00;11;12;03
Ron Lee
Let's say your clients are worried about providing for children. Should one of the worker spouses pass away? They would receive Social Security, right? Yes. And generally, if a spouse that qualifies for Social Security dies when their children are young, the surviving spouse spouse does receive a benefit, and the children themselves receive a benefit. And that sounds great, except, benefits to that spouse stop when the child reaches age 16, unless that child is disabled and the disability happened before they were 22.
00;11;12;06 - 00;11;38;14
Ron Lee
Now, I don't know about anybody on the call here today, but my kids didn't get off the payroll at age 16, so that is not a great solution. In addition, the benefits to the child then would actually stop when they turn 18 unless they're still in high school. Then they would receive it until their age 19. So what do they do in the meantime?
00;11;38;16 - 00;12;03;24
Ron Lee
Isn't there going to be a significant shortfall in the amount of income that they're receiving? But not only that, there's also this question about the earnings limit. How how do we handle that? We know that if they earn more than $24,480 in 2026, for example, they're going to lose a dollar of benefits for every $2 that they earn above that limit.
00;12;03;26 - 00;12;33;26
Ron Lee
And so maybe Social Security just by itself isn't a great strategy for people with young children. Then the second situation may be even more misunderstood than the first. What happens when both spouses are receiving Social Security retirement benefits and one of them passes away? Well, the answer is that the survivor gets the greater of the two benefits, but not both benefits.
00;12;33;29 - 00;13;11;02
Ron Lee
So while it's good that they receive the higher check, oftentimes their living expenses may continue on the same pace as they were before. For example, the mortgage payment doesn't go down. The utilities are no less expensive. So what should they be thinking about doing to replace their income? The answer, of course, is life insurance. We all know that everyone with a spouse and children needs to make sure that they buy enough life insurance to take care of the family, replace the income, pay the mortgage, send the kids to college, and so forth.
00;13;11;05 - 00;13;38;24
Ron Lee
But are these young couples considering that there will be a period of time when they won't be receiving assistance from Social Security? Likewise, after retirement? Are they really expecting that Social Security, which for most people isn't enough anyway, will somehow magically be enough, and sufficient for their needs? Once one of those checks goes away? Of course, a proper needs analysis is always best.
00;13;39;01 - 00;14;06;16
Ron Lee
But in those cases where you just need a quick number for the clients looking to replace a lost retirement check, just take the amount of the lesser check and multiply it by the number of months that they want to protect the income. For example, if the lesser benefit were $1,000 a month and they wanted to protect the income for 20 years, that would be 1000 times 12 times 20 or $240,000.
00;14;06;18 - 00;14;35;15
Ron Lee
It's a quick and easy way to make sure that your clients don't suffer financially from the loss of a check. So who should you be talking about with these ideas? Well, for the first idea, everybody who has kids and might depend on Social Security for the second idea. Think about everyone at or near retirement medicine clients. Clients with retirement plans to rollover, those to an estate planning, and so on.
00;14;35;18 - 00;14;51;11
Ron Lee
Your clients need you to help them understand where their plans fall short. So regardless of why people initially came to you, make sure you bring this up. Their loved ones will thank you someday.
00;14;51;13 - 00;15;18;10
Tom Pecoraro
Hello, everyone. Tom Pecoraro here. Senior market sales. Glad to be participating in this. Wanted to kind of start with, I you all was a strategy and not an investment. We can design the best policies in the world, but if you position them wrong, the case dies. Or even worse, it gets mis sold. IUL isn't about, built to to win on one category.
00;15;18;11 - 00;15;54;25
Tom Pecoraro
It solves three problems at the same time. So, first and foremost, protection. First, everything begins here. This is life insurance. Meaning that death benefit. That's, that lasts a lifetime. And that benefit passes tax free to beneficiaries. So before we ever talk about growth or before we talk about accumulation or solving the the core financial risk every client has, and that's premature death protection isn't the only one feature of an ideal.
00;15;54;26 - 00;16;25;29
Tom Pecoraro
It's at its foundation. So number two controlled growth. Now on top of that protection we layer growth right. So cash value that's linked to a market indexed. But there's a key difference here from you know investments. And that's a zero floor. So when the market goes negative the policy doesn't lose due to market performance. So now that also then leads to number three which we talk about in IU wills.
00;16;25;29 - 00;16;55;11
Tom Pecoraro
Is this the third problem. Why you all solved this. And that's the tax efficiency. So again going back to as long as it structured properly clients can access cash value through policy loans. And that means perpetual tax free income without triggering a taxable event. So the big thing we want to talk about here is, is when you put it all together you've got protection, controlled growth, tax advantage access.
00;16;55;13 - 00;17;25;09
Tom Pecoraro
So this is not an investment project. This is a financial strategy. So yes you don't get full market upside. What you get is participation without die. And side clients aren't trying to beat the market here. They're trying to avoid market damage. So I you all isn't where you chase returns. It's where you protect gains when clients are looking for upside without downside tax efficiency and lifetime perfection.
00;17;25;12 - 00;17;47;16
Tom Pecoraro
Your role isn't to show them an investment illustration. It's to show them a strategy. So the market bucket is where clients go for growth. But it comes with volatility. Bank bucket. This is where they go for safety. But growth is minimal. So when we talk about the bucket strategies the I you all sit in the middle and it's unique.
00;17;47;17 - 00;18;09;26
Tom Pecoraro
It provides protection controlled growth and tax leverage. Your role isn't to show them in an investment illustration. It's to show them a strategy. So the three position anchors strategy over product protection over performance structure drives outcome. Thank you and have a great day.
00;18;09;29 - 00;18;32;21
Michelle Owens
Hi my name is Michelle and I appreciate you guys letting me participate in your contest. I want to share a sales concept that I think you guys can use with really any retirement income planning situation. It might even start with a client who's asking you about Social Security, or they have a long term care question. Maybe a medicine question.
00;18;32;21 - 00;19;09;21
Michelle Owens
Right? It's something to me that you'll be able to discuss or get into. What is their retirement income strategy? And when you can carry that conversation over into looking at retirement income and to looking at what they've been able to accumulate, what I like about that is you're going to be able to figure out who feels secure with their current retirement income plan, and you'll probably be able to identify with some of those clients that feel good about where they're at, if they're going to have excess assets when they have those excess assets, sorry.
00;19;09;24 - 00;19;29;05
Michelle Owens
They should be talking about, then what do they want to do with those? Is it leaving a legacy to their kids? Because a lot of people, when you have single, you know, individuals or married couples, most of them with their legacy plan, look at what they want to leave to their kids and how they want to do it.
00;19;29;07 - 00;19;59;14
Michelle Owens
Unfortunately, what happens, maybe before they've talked to you is they don't understand when assets pass to their kids. Some are going to be more efficient than others. And so I want to help you guys talk about and have a conversation to educate clients as to a real secure way to not only have that retirement income, but a secure way to set up a legacy plan when they're looking at their qualified retirement plan assets.
00;19;59;16 - 00;20;27;21
Michelle Owens
A lot of times they don't understand that the IRA, that they have the 401 K that they have, that they just assume will pass to their kids with anything left over. They don't know that if they're in an estate tax situation, that asset will be hit with estate taxes. Their beneficiaries, when they inherit that asset, they will owe all that tax deferral, at that beneficiary's tax rate.
00;20;27;23 - 00;20;53;14
Michelle Owens
They also, with the Secure act now in place, will have to pay those taxes quicker. The Secure act kind of shed new light on this concept. A lot of people talked about this as wealth transfer or capital transfer. We like to call it secure transfer because of the Secure act. And this new ten year tax collection rule that they put on most beneficiaries nowadays.
00;20;53;16 - 00;21;36;04
Michelle Owens
So if you have clients, let's in this case consider this client. Her name's Judy. And we'll say she has a sizable estate. We'll put her in a situation where as you're talking to her, you start figuring out she will probably owe estate tax, and she will probably have excess qualified assets to pass on to her kids. So if you talk to her and she understands the amount of taxes that could be owed and could be, you know, taken away from her children, go to the government instead of her children, she would be interested in talking to you about ways to make that legacy plan more efficient.
00;21;36;07 - 00;22;00;15
Michelle Owens
When we look at this example, if we just assume and we're going to be conservative here, that she has around 300,000 of excess assets. If that estate of hers is going to be susceptible to estate tax, you can see right now in our current tax environment, she could the estate would, oh, 40% of that value at her death.
00;22;00;15 - 00;22;27;18
Michelle Owens
So she would be giving up potentially passing on 120,000, to her kids of that IRA right off the top. Then let's assume the kids that are inheriting this, if they're in a high tax bracket as well, the income tax that would be owed federally. So I'm not even looking right now at state income tax or state inheritance tax issues like we have here.
00;22;27;21 - 00;22;56;17
Michelle Owens
We're just looking federal. That could be another hundred and 11,000 off that IRA. So you're looking at a legacy plan where she thought she was passing on 300,000, and now she's potentially only giving her kids less than a third of that. This is where to me, if you were talking to Jane and you said, what if I could make sure that your kids inherited an asset that had no market risk, that had no tax risk?
00;22;56;19 - 00;23;42;05
Michelle Owens
And day one, I could triple the size of this, IRA excess that you have. How would you feel about that? Would you want to talk more about it? I think this is a good strategy because you're not only securing her legacy, you're making her feel better. You're giving her peace of mind. So with life insurance, what I like to look at, and that's a strategy that I use here, is to say if we took that 300,000 in Jane's case and we used a spear, something that would guarantee those annual premium payments into life insurance that spear right now could produce, a little over 18,000 a year, based on her life, the payments.
00;23;42;05 - 00;24;04;14
Michelle Owens
And I want to be fair with this. If I use the after tax amount, assuming she's in a high tax bracket as well, I could get a little over $11,600 to use towards a face amount for this policy and our life protection product. That product is going to give her a much higher death benefit tax free to her kids.
00;24;04;16 - 00;24;37;00
Michelle Owens
For guaranteed tell she's 90 for a low premium cost. That's what this product is known for is the low cost. With this nice guarantee out to age 90. So we look at this, we're able to turn 300,000 of a qualified asset that was open to market risk, had significant tax risk. And turn that into something that's, guaranteed 970,000 of tax free death benefit for her legacy plan.
00;24;37;03 - 00;25;03;29
Michelle Owens
With this, it also gives her the ability and flexibility to change your mind because our product, the life protection product, it allows individuals to have a guaranteed refund option. It's for anyone age 60 and under that they can actually get a full refund of premium in years 20 through 25. And so for her, if you think about it, we purchase this when she's 60.
00;25;04;01 - 00;25;27;09
Michelle Owens
She is able to actually get full refund of premium if she changes her mind. She also has that chronic illness and terminal illness writer that are put on the policy free of charge as well. If we wanted to get into discussions on, you know, how to structure this with an eyelet, how to maybe make it a little more secure, she could add a living benefit of an LTC rider.
00;25;27;15 - 00;25;53;16
Michelle Owens
There's a lot of options here for her, but what I love about it is we've secured that legacy plan for her, as well as maybe giving her the ability in retirement to spend a little more, you know, feel better about, her retirement income, knowing that she has her kids taken care of. What I wanted to cover last and closing is just you guys have access to a lot of different tools.
00;25;53;16 - 00;26;19;04
Michelle Owens
I don't know if you've been out on our sales professional access page, but the concept that I talked about, secure transfer, there's tools there for you. There's a seminar that you can use that has, client scripting. It's been approved for client use. We have fliers that are available case studies that you can show to clients. Each of our sales concepts, we try to put tools out there.
00;26;19;04 - 00;26;33;01
Michelle Owens
So there's a number of different concepts. If you guys have questions on any of them, feel free to give us a call and let us know. We're happy to discuss your specific client in detail. Thank you.
00;26;33;03 - 00;26;54;14
Matt Hays
I'm Matt Hayes from our life insurance team here at Sims. And I'm going to be talking about Dan Fisher reviews today. So, when should a beneficiary review be done? At minimum, they should be done annually. You can feel free to do them whenever you'd like throughout the year, but at minimum, I would do it annual, either at the end of the year, at the beginning of the year.
00;26;54;14 - 00;27;07;13
Matt Hays
It's a good time frame. Some people like to do it, right after tax season, maybe after the EP, it really is up to you. But at least once a year at minimum. What would be the cause of the reason.
00;27;07;13 - 00;27;08;29
Matt Hays
For being six year review?
00;27;09;00 - 00;27;38;09
Matt Hays
Well, things such as a marriage or divorce, you know, we've all seen statistics out there, varying numbers, but roughly, they say about 50% of all marriages these days end in divorce. So why would you want your money ultimately going to somebody that is, that you're no longer married to any, birth, adoption, death of a beneficiary or other, opportunities?
00;27;38;11 - 00;27;59;29
Matt Hays
Now, here. It's a mess. We have a lot of advisors that work with the senior market, predominantly on the Medicare side. And, how many folks have had new grandchildren born in the past year? So it's an opportunity to review that with the client and dig a little bit deeper into, into their lives and how you can best be of assistance.
00;28;00;03 - 00;28;26;27
Matt Hays
There's also lifestyle changes. Maybe you've had a new job that's brought on more money. Maybe you've brought on or, been the recipient of an inheritance or, there's lottery winners now, I myself, I've never been one, but, I know those folks are out there. And then also wills and trust. You know, that adds another reason why you should review beneficiaries.
00;28;26;29 - 00;28;40;06
Matt Hays
Maybe there's been a move involved. So many different things are opportunities to really kind of sit down and almost do a fact finder with your current clients that you already have.
00;28;40;09 - 00;28;54;08
Matt Hays
So what should you reveal? Well, quite frankly, everything. Nothing's off the table, but I think you should offer to look at any life insurance policy, no matter if you were the age of record or not, you know, it's an.
00;28;54;08 - 00;28;55;12
Matt Hays
Opportunity for you to.
00;28;55;12 - 00;29;25;16
Matt Hays
Kind of, take a peek under that, under the table and really see what somebody has and peel that onion back. You know, you can use so many different, narratives or adages, but it's true. Looking at somebody's life insurance policy helps you figure out maybe there's a discrepancy here or something that I could do where I could offer a policy that they have a definitions again, and maybe it's not life insurance, maybe it's a long term care plan.
00;29;25;16 - 00;29;49;12
Matt Hays
You know, all different things that as a mess, can help you out with and lousy an opportunity to build rapport and potentially uncover that new sale, which I just spoke about. We all know and we all talk about stickiness. You know, the more policies you have with somebody, the more opportunities there are to, create where they're going to be advocates for your business.
00;29;49;14 - 00;30;05;10
Matt Hays
And, you know, our folks over at, United Mutual of Omaha, we do all sorts of business with them, not only on the life insurance side, but we have some other, areas of business as well, and just a few other items of note here. When you do the.
00;30;05;11 - 00;30;06;15
Matt Hays
Beneficiary review.
00;30;06;15 - 00;30;29;02
Matt Hays
You're putting your clients at ease. It's one less thing for them to worry about because they've made sure that they're up to date on everything. And it's a good time to remind your clients that life insurance proceeds to a beneficiary. Don't go through probate and generally and often tax free, and you want to make sure to remind your clients.
00;30;29;02 - 00;30;38;08
Matt Hays
And that's a good reminder for advisors as well. Don't forget about those contingent beneficiaries. Be prepared and have a plan even in.
00;30;38;08 - 00;30;39;12
Matt Hays
Depth.
00;30;39;15 - 00;30;46;26
Matt Hays
You know, take care of what you can while you can. So, thank you for joining us today.
00;30;46;28 - 00;31;12;08
Laura Harral
Hi, everyone. Laura, with senior market sales, financial solutions, my sales idea for the day is using Trump accounts as a door opener. So there's been a lot of buzz about the children's Trump accounts as part of the one big beautiful bill. What they are is any any U.S. citizen child under the age of 18 can have one of these accounts.
00;31;12;10 - 00;31;46;11
Laura Harral
But the really important part piece of this is any child be born between January 1st of 2025 and December 31st of 2028. You can get $1,000 of seed money, that is put into this, account. So what they're really designed for is kind of a starter retirement or savings account with tax deferred growth. Parents or guardians manage the account as custodians until the child turns 18.
00;31;46;13 - 00;32;16;08
Laura Harral
You individuals can contribute up to $5,000 per year, and employers can contribute up to 2500. And then some employers are actually matching an additional $2,500. Parents can sign up using the IRS form for five four, seven, and the link is in this. So that's who can sign up.
00;32;16;11 - 00;32;44;29
Laura Harral
But what I really want to talk about is the differences, the Trump accounts versus talking to your clients about using life insurance on children as an alternative to the Trump account. So the pros of using life insurance, it does provide a death benefit. Life insurance is always life insurance first. We can design life insurance using IU, ALS as overfunded.
00;32;45;01 - 00;33;11;03
Laura Harral
And so all of those, cash accumulation can grow inside of the policy. The policy owner can take out cash later on as a tax free distribution. The withdrawals can be used for anything. They don't have to be for college, first time home purchases, retirement savings or other qualified uses. So, you know, think about, think outside the box.
00;33;11;03 - 00;33;37;16
Laura Harral
When you're using an IQ goal for cash accumulation, you could maybe use it if your child wanted to start a business when they grow up. Maybe if they want to buy their first car, they can use it for college if they want to. But it doesn't have to be limited to only certain items. There's no penalty for taking cash out early versus when you use a retirement account and take cash out early.
00;33;37;16 - 00;34;02;09
Laura Harral
There potentially is taxable consequences and penalties, but you have to pay using an IU. Well, there's no penalties. The other piece that I really like on getting insurance on for children is that guaranteed insure ability piece. I don't think people really talk about it enough. That guaranteed insure ability is huge. When you take out life insurance on a child, it protects them.
00;34;02;11 - 00;34;32;04
Laura Harral
If anything should happen to them in the future, think about how many children potentially have, diabetes later on in life. Mental health issues. Come down, come have cancer. You know, all of those health issues that maybe you don't think about children having, but it protects them. They also have living benefits, such as chronic and critical illness writers that are automatically built into the life insurance policy.
00;34;32;06 - 00;34;58;11
Laura Harral
And then contributions aren't limited, like on a Trump account. So there's no maximum amount that you can put in. They do have to follow financial suitability guidelines. And we can work with you on structuring levels that are going to be beneficial for both the client, the child, and making sure that they're structured the right way and how the plans want them.
00;34;58;14 - 00;35;18;29
Laura Harral
But I think the biggest pieces, there's tons of options, and you're not limited to the constraints of just a retirement account. And that's why I love talking about, life insurance for children. And I think it's a great door opener. Thanks for joining us.
00;35;19;01 - 00;35;46;27
Michael Marasco
Hello, everyone. Mike Mariscal with Mutual of Omaha here to talk to you today about some ideas. When you're talking to people about their final expense, obviously we have our Living Promise product, but why not take in consideration an alternative that may offer a more compelling solution for your customers? Let's talk a little bit about our living promise and then take a look at our Are you Well Express product on the Living Promise.
00;35;46;27 - 00;36;09;21
Michael Marasco
This is obviously a very steady plan for us. It's a great product. We will issue that from ages 45 to 85 for the for the plan that will go up to $50,000. If they do not qualify for that, that will bring the issue ages down to a maximum of 80 and to a maximum amount of $20,000. These are very good policies.
00;36;09;23 - 00;36;36;12
Michael Marasco
They're guaranteed to age 100 if the premiums paid. The, thought behind this is that many times people not are not looking to just purchase the death benefit. So we do have some living promise. Benefit plan riders on here. One cost rider is an accidental death benefit rider. And we have some no cost riders. Accidental death benefit rider for terminal illness or nursing home confinement rider.
00;36;36;14 - 00;37;02;13
Michael Marasco
These are very good, but they're a little bit limited in scope compared with the, index Universal Life product that we're going to talk about. One of the things that I think is very important in for somebody to take a look at when you are talking about the final expense is the face amounts. Okay. A lot of times when you're talking about final expense, people are thinking, you know, cost of bearing, you know, things of that nature.
00;37;02;13 - 00;37;32;03
Michael Marasco
But there might be some other considerations in there. And some of these people who are talking to you about final expense know that they have more than those type of expenses deal with. But when they think final expense, they're thinking burial. And hopefully I can do some other things to help cover some of those other expenses. Now, if we take a look at this index, universal life Express, we can see that we have substantial opportunity for a larger face amount of the life insurance.
00;37;32;06 - 00;37;57;18
Michael Marasco
Now let's understand that realistically, people looking for final expense are probably going to be more in that, you know, 50 plus to 75 age range. So in here, when you're looking at a maximum amount on the, living promise, potentially $50,000, now, you have a lot more room to work with here as far as space, amount scale.
00;37;57;21 - 00;38;34;28
Michael Marasco
And this is a very good policy. It is an index universal life policy. There's plenty of opportunities to access cash and have them grow and utilize the cash value. These policies are also guaranteed for 20 years or until the person turns age 80. There's also a lot more, value to the no cost riders. There are living benefit riders for terminal, chronic and critical illness so they can accelerate a portion of that death benefit to cover those waivers of surrender charges for partial withdrawals and guaranteed mature ability rider.
00;38;35;00 - 00;39;05;25
Michael Marasco
And there is left guard riders, meaning if they decide to pull income out of this policy, it will never lapse, causing them the taxation situation. So there's a lot more to look at in this policy than the, final expense policy alone. We do have some cost riders on this policy as well. However, I think those aren't necessarily things that need to be added on for this product to work very well.
00;39;05;28 - 00;39;27;16
Michael Marasco
So when I want to wrap this up, I always take a look at, you know, what are the advantages of the, are you early versus or, living promise, higher face amounts. That is the number one, number one thing to look at. We have a broader scope of living benefit riders on their vehicle at no cost and even at the cost riders.
00;39;27;19 - 00;39;51;21
Michael Marasco
And if you were to do a look in a comparison, you were going to potentially get more coverage for a similar outlay of premium dollars. If you run these things, you're going to probably find that, the discrepancy in the value of the premium dollar is not as much as you would think. In many times, it's often less to utilize this.
00;39;51;28 - 00;40;24;02
Michael Marasco
Are you well, express product. So that is my idea is to have that discussion about that. Are you in a league when you're talking to people with the final expense? The other thing I want to mention, in keeping with, Mark's theme of Valentine's Day, most of these people who you were speaking with are likely to have grandchildren, so why not make that pitch for a children's whole life policy at the same time, you're talking to them about their final expenses because they can purchase if their grandparents, these policies on their children.
00;40;24;04 - 00;41;00;05
Steve Valasek
Thank you for your time. Good afternoon everyone. Steve Vlasic, life insurance marketing consultant here at Senior Market Sales. We're gonna talk about redefining your life insurance with long term care riders. We dive into a lot of policy reviews with people and tell them the importance of going into their current existing clients and working with them on what they currently have, and reviewing it and seeing what they have for the ability to make their products a little bit better, give their products, their their ages, a little bit more, acuity, their clients a little bit more, ability to do something with those policies.
00;41;00;07 - 00;41;26;00
Steve Valasek
What we're gonna talk about is an individual has an existing life insurance policy with roughly about $75,000 in cash value in the product, the pay about 200 bucks a month and have roughly a $200,000 baby with no living benefits. As we know, a lot of the older policies that have been around for 20, 30, 40 years, they don't have a lot of the benefits that majority of our new products do.
00;41;26;03 - 00;41;46;28
Steve Valasek
So being able to put them and repurpose them into a new policy is a big advantage just in that, let alone anything else that can happen within that policy. So this individual, they don't really have a life insurance need anymore. The kids are out of the house. We going into retirement? I have the house has paid off.
00;41;46;28 - 00;42;05;15
Steve Valasek
They have assets, but they really understand what it lights insurance is and what it can provide. But if they're going to keep it, they want it to be able to provide and be as maximized as it can. So what we're talking about here is an individual at 65 years old, like I said, doesn't really need life insurance.
00;42;05;17 - 00;42;30;13
Steve Valasek
They don't have a long have LTC, but they truly see the need to understand the importance of what long term care can do to them and where it can come into play for them. You know, in their family, in their in their livelihood, because they've seen the cost of care, whether it be with family, friends, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, they understand what the need is.
00;42;30;15 - 00;42;55;29
Steve Valasek
And they're concerned with paying both of LTC and maintaining the life insurance policies. They want to have the life insurance. They understand what the life insurance is for what it can provide in regards to a tax free death benefit and helping, whether you know that he predeceased his spouse or it goes directly to his kids, understands that, is concerned with the cost of long term care because he knows long term care premiums are not cheap anymore.
00;42;56;01 - 00;43;18;10
Steve Valasek
They are definitely much more than what they used to be. So what we're going to look at is taking and doing a 1035 exchange and exchanging that cash values in the existing policy. We're going to use the protection advantage are you will and current life policies. Is the cash value using that $75,000 from the existing policy bringing that over.
00;43;18;10 - 00;43;41;20
Steve Valasek
Now we're just looking at just a standard standard rate for this. These are the numbers we used. Didn't dive in anything crazy with preferred preferred plus just an individual. It's in good health is is able to go through the underwriting is able to get coverage. We looked at the 75,000 replacing the existing policy. And he chose to maintain that 200 bucks a month and 200 bucks a month, he said.
00;43;41;20 - 00;44;02;07
Steve Valasek
I've been paying it for years. May as well keep it up. We'll see what it comes back in and see if we need to look at, you know, changing anything. So went through ran these numbers on this particular individual. We were able to turn by repurposing that life insurance. We were able to put this individual in a much better position moving forward than they are right now.
00;44;02;07 - 00;44;27;04
Steve Valasek
With the current life insurance. By doing it, we were able to provide a $250,000 death benefit. And on top of that, we through a long term care rider on there that's going to provide $10,000 a month for LTC for 25 months. So not only were were we able to increase his death benefit substantially, we're adding on that long term care.
00;44;27;07 - 00;44;46;05
Steve Valasek
He's been paying it. He's got 75,000 in cash in there. And so our people that are paying 200 bucks a month, what he's been paying for years and putting him in a much better position as far as is going to work a lot better for him moving forward. Plus, the other nice thing is we're adding $150,000 death benefit to an already good policy.
00;44;46;08 - 00;45;05;24
Steve Valasek
So going through and looking at your client's client base and looking at your eight, you're seeing what they have available for you is a great way to leverage some of the new products that have been coming out that are available in the long term care market space to, to help your clients grow. That's what I have for you today.
00;45;05;26 - 00;45;11;11
Steve Valasek
Please give me a call. See? New market salesman. Thanks for your time.
00;45;11;13 - 00;45;38;04
Mark Lyons
I want to thank everyone for joining us today. I hope you found the ideas that we shared valuable. And you're able to institute them in your practice if you have any questions at all. We're here to help. You can reach us by phone. You can reach us by email. If you already have a life marketer, you can contact him or her as well.
00;45;38;06 - 00;46;03;05
Mark Lyons
If it's, more of a technical question, for the advanced sales team at at Mutual of Omaha, we can get you in touch with them as well. So we really enjoyed doing this, this webinar today. It's, something I, I'm hoping that we'll we'll do again in the future. It's different. It's fun.
00;46;03;08 - 00;46;35;02
Mark Lyons
And, it was, it was a really rewarding experience. And I hope you found that to. And so now it's time for you to cast your vote for the idea, that you like best or you think was the best. You have eight ideas to choose from. As a reminder, as a reminder, if you do vote, you will have the ability to win some Mutual of Omaha swag.
00;46;35;05 - 00;46;57;13
Mark Lyons
We'll contact you, and to let you know that, that you won that. So please, please pick the idea that, you like best. And we appreciate everyone for joining us today. And thank you again. We hope to see you next month. On Another Life webinar from SMS Financial Solutions.