Life

After experiencing the death of a dear loved one, and the terrible challenges that followed, my life has been forever changed. However, my loss has become an inspiration to help others, particularly through encouraging other financial professionals to adopt End-of-Life planning as a standard and routine part of what we do.   The more I strive to educate families and …

In my opinion, asking for help is the most taboo topic in our industry these days.  If our egos weren’t so huge, maybe I wouldn’t have felt the need to share my thoughts on the subject. But anyway, everyone should sit tight and prepare to be knocked down a peg or two—myself included. We all talk big. Sometimes, we hold …

After suffering through the grief and loss of my mother’s passing on Thanksgiving Day of 2008, it became increasingly apparent to me that End-of-Life Planning is a vital piece of any financial puzzle.  It has also become a passion and inspiration of mine to help educate every financial professional regarding the win-win opportunity of helping our clients and their families …

By Jay Gandee, February 28, 2014 A certain peace of mind comes with knowing that you’ve taken steps to help protect your loved ones’ financial future. While all types of life insurance can give you this sense of comfort, whole life insurance offers permanence that allows you to plan ahead. Most whole life policies contain several important features: a level …

So what does “knowing your product” actually mean? You probably think it means being knowledgeable about the various policies you sell. To some degree, that is correct. We all need to know details on the policies we market to our clients as well as the various riders that are associated with them … at least for compliance’s sake. However, surrender …

More and more people are now realizing that the best financial advice is to have a sound financial and estate plan that takes care of your funeral services, funeral costs and funeral expenses ahead of time. Pre-Need Planning is one of the most common ways to accomplish this type of planning. A Pre-Need Plan gives your clients the ability to …

In my last article, I discussed the value of shooting from the hip.  I can only imagine what some of you were thinking after reading it. You were probably thinking that it’s easier said than done. But here is something I neglected to explain, partially by design, so you would have the chance to think about it and also because …

We are in one of the toughest businesses out there, right? Nothing comes easy to an insurance agent anymore, right?  We are all getting too old for the games people play, right? So, we all learn lots of catchphrases and rhetorical sayings. We all believe that if we keep mastering the English language, or whatever language you sell in, everything …

By Alexandria Baca, January 9, 2014 American Financial Group Inc. (AFG), the insurer run by Cincinnati’s Lindner family, agreed to buy Summit Holdings Southeast Inc. from Liberty Mutual Group Inc. for about $250 million to build its workers’ compensation business. The total investment in Summit will be about $400 million, including a capital contribution at the completion of the all-cash …

Life and DI insurers have been using “nicotine” tests routinely for over a quarter century. Nevertheless, there continues to be frequent issues between producers, their clients, and underwriters regarding test results. Researching a lecture on anti-selection and fraud, I took a peek at what is out there about these tests on producer blogs. What I found makes this a high …