New Year, New Opportunities?

January is the time to make New Year’s resolutions and set goals for the coming year. Goal-setting allows you to set clear, achievable goals and helps provide direction and purpose, motivating you to work towards them and achieve personal and professional growth.

The beginning of the New Year is also a great time to check-in with your existing clients and offer to do a Life Insurance Policy Review.

A review of this kind is crucial because life is constantly changing and insurance coverage should reflect those changes. Here are some reasons why a life insurance review is important:

• Evolving Needs: As life progresses, major life events - such as marriages, births or deaths in one’s family - occur, all of which trigger a change in financial obligations and responsibilities. A policy review ensures that a client’s insurance coverage aligns with these changes and new needs.

• Beneficiary Updates: Life changes might also prompt a need to update beneficiaries.

• Changes in Federal or State tax laws

• Changes in the Life Insurance industry and product developments:

• Carrier Changes: Financial stability downgrades, increasing cost of insurance or other policy charges, or lowering current interest crediting rates

• Policy Performance: Insurance products and market conditions can change over time; reviewing a policy allows you to assess its performance, ensuring it still meets your client’s expectations in terms of returns, premiums, and coverage

• Cost Efficiency: Policy reviews help identify opportunities for cost savings; better rates or more suitable coverage options based on changes in the insurance market or one’s financial situation may be available

• Significant changes in underwriting efficiencies or new mortality assumptions based on longer life expectancies

• Health Changes: A change in health can impact insurance premiums.

  • If your client’s health has improved since the policy was first purchased, they may qualify for lower rates or better coverage

  • Conversely, declining health could necessitate adjustments to ensure adequate coverage is in place. 

    • This can keep current coverage for an extended period of time (example: converting expiring term to permanent coverage)

• Policy Terms and Conditions:

  • Understanding the fine print is essential; a review allows you and your client to re-familiarize yourself with the terms and conditions of their policy, ensuring awareness of any changes or updates that might affect their coverage.

Simply put, a Life Insurance Policy Review helps ensure that your clients life insurance coverage remains an effective tool in meeting their objectives and  protection they need.

The Life Insurance Wellness Check

At Watermark Life, we like to take it even a step further with what we call the Life Insurance Wellness Check.

We believe it is best for your client to know not just where they are with life insurance, but where they have been and where they are going. Maybe that means explaining the tax-saving advantages and opportunities of permanent life insurance. Maybe it’s initiating the long-term care conversation a year early instead of a year late. Or keying them in to upcoming legislative changes that may impact them.

If Watermark can help you have that conversation, don’t hesitate to reach out!