Many policyholders give up their whole life policies

COMMENT POSTED IN MY BLOG

Whole life product advocates and especially insurance agents argue that a whole life policy is useful during old age, a time when one is most likely to contract dread illnesses.

Apart from other economic reasons, I want to show that whole life policies are hardly kept beyond age 65. Why is it not kept beyond this age, the obvious reason is many don't believe that it is necessary and many believe in self insurance, a wise idea because liquidity at a time like this is more flexible and better choice.

What if you get and what if you don't get a disease , the probability seems 50/50 but I bet it is more than 80% chance you don't get. If you do, have an H&S is enough plus what you provided for in cash as self insurance will adequately address this problem.

Maintaining a whole life policy at this age is expensive and a waste of money and self insurance is a better option.

Therefore the case for a whole life policy is weak and you are better off if you have a term insurance plus investment with better return. The chances of having a better life and retirement are best via "buy term and invest the rest".

I want to show you statistics from MAS website to corroborate my argument and my findings. If you look at the life insurance persistency from 2001 to 2007 you see a pattern. You see high decline immediately in first 2 years and henceforth persistency declines at a rate of about 4%. This pattern is seen in all the last 5 years.

If I extrapolate the rate of decline to next 20 to 30 years I can see that only about about 10% or less of life policies will in force.

Assuming a 30 year old man buys a policy, by the time he is 60 or 65, he would have terminated or surrendered his policy. This phenomenon is supported by another statistics, the surrender statistics and it has been a whopping high of about 65% compared to maturity of about 35%. In other words a lot of people surrendered their policies earlier.

What do these figures tell you? Very few kept their policies beyond 65 years old. Why buy whole life insurance if you don't keep till old age? Let me tell you, it is burdensome; cash return too low.

I have done another research earlier and posted somewhere on death claim. I found no claim beyond the magical age 65, not that no one died or no one got dread disease but no one or very few kept whole life insurance beyond this age.

Death claim median age is 45 and average claimed amount is only a miserable $45K and the highest of $200k was from a term insurance.

Conclusion: insurance is most needed during time when your responsibility is the highest and you should have enough to address the needs at that point in time. Term is the best instrument, cheap and efficient.

Do not believe what the insurance agents tells you about whole life insurance. Their argument is obvious, it is high commission for themselves and life long source of revenue and income for the insurer.

zhummmeng