Friday, February 28, 2014
The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy issued a bulletin to educate investors about how fees can impact the value of an investment portfolio. As usual, life insurance is often an overlooked asset in a client’s portfolio but is no less...
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Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Fitch Ratings’ U.S. Life outlook considers the industry's strong balance sheet fundamentals and liability profile, and improved operating performance. These positive factors have somewhat mitigated the agency’s ongoing concerns over the challenging...
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Thursday, January 30, 2014
The cost of doing business in the Guaranteed Universal Life (GUL) markets has risen as the interest rates have fallen. In 2009 the GUL market had increases up to 40%, 2010 increases up to 20%, 2011 up to 40%, 2012 up to 18% and year to date in 2013 ...
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Friday, January 24, 2014
Thank you to everyone who stopped by the Veralytic suite at this year’s 48th Annual Heckerling Conference. In addition to finding information about Hard-to-Value assets from our friends and partners Insurance Trust Monitor(ITM) and PDS, there were...
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Friday, January 10, 2014
When you can show that you are more compliant then the next advisor then you have that competitive advantage. Don’t just stay ahead of the competition; use compliance as your competitive advantage. Not all regulations are valid to all clients but...
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Friday, January 3, 2014
Outsourcing and co-sourcing remain viable ways to improve efficiency in 2014. A 2013 survey by EY indicates that "82% of respondents were outsourcing or co-sourcing...to third-party service providers bring[ing] a fresh perspective... Via a mix of...
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Thursday, December 5, 2013
Moody’s has changed its outlook on the US life insurance industry to stable from negative, driven by the expectation that interest rates will continue their gradual rise in 2014, and that slow improvement in US economic growth rates and employment...
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Monday, November 18, 2013
In a the new FINRA “Report on Conflicts of Interest”, focuses on ways that broker-dealers can do more to manage and mitigate conflicts of interest in their business. There cannot be talk of a conflict of interest without starting first with the best ...
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Friday, November 8, 2013
Financial strength and claims-paying ability ratings of the insurer is one of the five factors of suitability. The obvious reason being that insurance is most simply defined as an agreement for the payment of a premium today in exchange for payment ...
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Thursday, October 31, 2013
What’s so scary for Halloween 2013? It’s scary that there are those that are still unaware that there are standards for managing life insurance as an asset. The standards drafted earlier this year by industry leaders at West Point. These standards...
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