As an estate planner or investment advisor, you may be faced with a client who asks you for advice about considering a life settlement for their insurance policy. A life settlement is an option for a policy owner to sell and exchange their life insurance policy for a lump sum payment that’s higher than the cash surrender value and less than the death benefit.
Historically, uncertainty in financial markets increases life insurance lapse activity. Think about your parents and the large number of baby boomers who are retiring every day or already retired. What are they worried about? According to the 2023 Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies Report, the most often cited retirement fears are declining health that requires long-term care (36%), Social Security will be reduced or cease to exist in the future (36%), outliving their savings and investments (35%), possible long-term care costs (30%), not being able to meet the financial needs of their family (30%), and cognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease (29%).
Advisors are asking their compliance departments, “How can I tell my clients that I provide comprehensive and holistic financial planning, yet not disclose the life settlement option when it is appropriate?” With an aging population, many clients prefer to receive a buyout of their existing life insurance for an amount that is higher than their cash surrender value, providing liquidity for investments and other retirement needs.
Life insurance can be the largest unmanaged asset a client owns. Policy owners allocate significant liquidity on an ongoing basis, often long after they transition out of the original need that the policy was put in place to protect. Discussing the opportunity to take an illiquid asset and monetize it when clients are going through a financial transition, whether to fund business, retirement, long term care or charitable endeavors, can be a powerful client conversation.
Fiduciaries can take some preliminary steps to identify at-risk clients, starting with asking clients three questions.
Tax practitioners who are wary about discussing life settlements are not alone. Learn more about getting the best value in a life settlement transaction.
Two provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the doubling of the estate tax exemption and more favorable tax treatment for the policy owner selling their policy, are the reasons the life settlement community is excited about the Act.
The new tax law increasing estate tax exemptions is one in a series of recent changes that are impacting seniors who’ve previously deployed life insurance strategies for estate and tax planning.
Any determination regarding whether to move forward with the purchase of new life insurance or how to handle existing coverage greatly depends on what happens with federal estate tax repeal.
Senior plans may “go awry” because of increasing longevity, but with a customized life expectancy analysis, planners will be able to help their clients make midcourse adjustments to minimize potential damage.
