Americans Underinsured? Why?

[Sir Ringo]

It's the I'll never die syndrome.

 

[JMO Fan]

Families have changed. Fewer see marriage, or even children, as a reason to have contingency funds, like life insurance. Husbands are not usually the sole breadwinner anymore, & do not feel as responsible to see that the family's finances don't fail if they die.

Also, most see life insurance as a temporary need, feel other funds (or none at all) are sufficient after the children are gone. Fewer fear the family having to pay estate taxes (if there are any to pay). Term insurance pays lower commissions, so the agent's incentive to sell a policy is lessened.

 

[James]

Families have changed. Fewer see marriage, or even children, as a reason to have contingency funds, like life insurance. Husbands are not usually the sole breadwinner anymore, & do not feel as responsible to see that the family's finances don't fail if they die.

Also, most see life insurance as a temporary need, feel other funds (or none at all) are sufficient after the children are gone. Fewer fear the family having to pay estate taxes (if there are any to pay). Term insurance pays lower commissions, so the agent's incentive to sell a policy is lessened.

The two income household is where the majority of change has come, at least IMHO. Temporary Need, now that one IMHO rest on the Insurance Industry and the New Age Agent, let's face facts, it is hard to sell W/L online or without a face to face so why not just badmouth it so we can sell term, the easier online sale or less trouble such as the Rapid Non Med Term.

Ps it's like people that develope term sites, obviously to sell or create leads for sale than they go around to all the forum sites seemingly to attack anyone that sells W/L. Obviously these people are serving their agenda.

 

[bartimus]

I am of the opinion that most people are over financed and buried in debt to consider the ramifications of loss of income when they are gone. It is a expense many probably personally feel is a waste of money considering all of the other things that can be purchased with the same money.

 

[Cenla Agent]

I'm assuming that most have read about the flattening of Life Insurance Sales (including other lines such as DI) in the last decade or so. Basically, I'm wondering why? Term is getting cheaper all the time, the term length is longer and longer, in another thread someone brought up the 40 year term to go along with the 40 year mortgage. Yet while the discussion didn't go into their even being a 40 year term product, it is still an interesting discussion all do itself!

I'm yet wondering why the flattening of sales? Is due to the Insurance Carriers themselves? We all know they seem to have change marketing attempts, more and more these carriers seem to be moving to a BGA or whatever, moving the sale force outside of the company. Or does the problem lie in the Agents themselves along with the product? Or could it be the general public does not see value in it?

It's probably a combination of the things you mention. One Agency Manager in the life market told me it was because "there are no agents anymore." You said in another thread that life insurance is sold and not bought and I think that is basically correct. The new Mass Mutual TV commercials about it life insurance being in the back of most people's mind is right on the money. Most know they need it, but it is in the back of their mind and many are underinsured.

 

[Cenla Agent]

The points about the changing family dynamics with the husband no longer being the sole breadwinner as well as the indebtedness and changed spending habits as compared to 50-75 years ago are big factors too.

 

[James]

It's probably a combination of the things you mention. One Agency Manager in the life market told me it was because "there are no agents anymore." You said in another thread that life insurance is sold and not bought and I think that is basically correct. The new Mass Mutual TV commercials about it life insurance being in the back of most people's mind is right on the money. Most know they need it, but it is in the back of their mind and many are underinsured.

Yes, Mass Mutual is running those commercials nationally, yet they don't seem to be very active here??? Great Company!

 

[Guest]

It's probably a combination of the things you mention. One Agency Manager in the life market told me it was because "there are no agents anymore."

I agree. Young(er) people don't want to go into the insurance industry as they did 20 years ago (or 40 in my case). I remember when getting out of college and going to work for an NYL or Met or even a local agent was "a good thing."

Of course there were not as many job opportunities back then as there are now... technology (back then you had to be a double-E) or healthcare (RN or MD) or government (had to be breathing.)

And to be fair, it's not just insurance. Young people don't want to go into anything 'sales' related. They really look down on anyone who sells something. Young people today want to be "creative." They want to dream up the next hedge fund, or get in on the ground floor of a start-up firm, or come up with the next Flicker or Google. They don't see sales as being a worthwhile endeavor... maybe because so many of them have poor 'people skills' having grown up playing video games after school all day instead of joining 4-H or the school theatre group, or sports team or a club (science, language, computer, etc.)

To them, we're all Willie Loman.

Al

 

[Brad Howard]

I'm told by some that digital is the way to go! If insurance can not be sold online than the death of Life Insurance and other types. Much like this sites that promote Term Only Financial Group (that is right, two sales per hour! I guess we won't be underinsured for long!), now I'm not sure, if online sales means selling NonMed with digital signature can we only imagine if we want to be in the biz to begin with. While I'm not against these policies per say yet I don't think they are all that great unless specifically place for short time need of insurance. Yet looking at the lapse rate being touted about on these plans I guess most feel the same way!

Ps, this is the claim on the website that I find in so many:

Feel like I should respond here. We sell mostly fully underwritten products with carriers like AIG, ING and such. We probably only do about 20% with nonmed carriers and we prefer the ones that fully underwrite, not the quick issue table 2 type pricing.

We’re all former AIG managers and RVPs that just saw a niche where folks wanted to buy online and decided to develop a process around that concept. It sure has not been without its challenges.

The multiple daily sales come as a result of dialer technology we have deployed. We used to generate and just sell “x” number of leads per day to paying agents, now we load lead data into a dialer database and allow them to connect to it via internet and have many conversations per hour.

It’s not “easy” work, insurance selling never is, but if you can stand the intensity of many connects per hour with prospects, or use a TM to filter and transfer folks, you can have many closing interviews per hour. Hope this helps explain what we do……..

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

There are other factors such as the spousal relationship and even the relationship with the kids. We have a 50%+ divorce rate but what percentage of people staying married would get a divorce but for one of a thousand reasons just stay together.

In many of those cases where it's a marriage of convenience the spouse doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to their partner after they die. Parents also can have bad relations with their kids and also not care if they get any money when they die.

So for a husband to get life insurance he really has to overtly care about what happens to his wife and or kids after he passes. If the attitude is "screw her - she'll just blow the money and re-marry" you don't have a life sale.

Also, if the marriage isn't really doing that great the spouses can see it as actually an incentive for the other person to die. My wife and I are doing great - 10 years strong and even we joke about it. I have a mill on me and the running joke is what would happen if I got killed in an accident. My wife's reply: "Depends on how fast I get the million."

The joke on my side is my wife died is "we'll I'd have to hire an in-house nanny for Ryan and I hear some of the girls from Sweden do a fantastic job."