Advisors/Trustees/Fiduciaries/Agents & Brokers have all struggled with the management life insurance. This is not surprising given the lack of standards for the prudent selection and proper management of life insurance as an asset. In response, best-practice standards were announced at earlier this year to implement a standard process for life insurance like those already used for most all the other types of assets that are routinely manage.

These Best Practices Standard for Life Insurance Stewards were finalized for public comment by seventeen industry leaders at West Point this past April 2013. In attendance were representatives of nearly every profession who has clients who own life insurance, including: the largest trust and estates law firm; largest third-party administrator of TOLI for institutional fiduciaries; the largest association of financial planners; one of the leading financial planning schools; and, most of the largest independent distributors of life insurance.

Such best-practice standards are particularly welcome in the current environment where customer complaints are on the rise and life insurance agents, brokers and/or consultants are increasingly offering policy reviews. Policy reviews have been a popular marketing tool of the life insurance industry and these marketing efforts are intensifying in response to the OCC Handbook for Unique and Hard-to-Value Assets published last August “requir[ing] bank fiduciaries to … conduct annual [policy] reviews [that] should evaluate … whether the [life insurance] policy is performing as illustrated or whether replacement should be considered” [emphasis added]. However, not all policy reviews include the ingredients essential to YOUR meaning of the words “client’s best interest”.  Herein lays the opportunity to show your best clients you are taking care of them.    

 “Finally … this is excellent and long overdue … a welcomed structure” said a FIRMA Board Member about these standards from the fiduciary’s perspective. The next Best-Practice Standards Boot Camp for Life Insurance Stewards is November 5-7 at West Point, NY. This is where you can learn how to ask the right questions about the asset that is too often the last, largest, and most-neglected on their balance sheets.

Both the largest family office association and largest third-party-administration (TPA) of trust-owned life insurance (TOLI) have already held presentations about these Standards.  Don’t let predatory policy review promoters take advantage of your clients.  Download the West Point Draft “checklist” and use it to ensure clients’ best-interests are being served, and join in the LinkedIn group conversation about these Best-Practice Standards for Life Insurance Stewards.

_{Veralytic has NO financial interest in these Best-Practice Standards Boot Camps for Life Insurance Stewards.  To the contrary, because Veralytic research supports Best-Practice Standards for Life Insurance Stewards, Uniform Prudent Investor Act (UPIA) Sections 7 and 2, and related Cochran and French precedential case law, Veralytic subscribers are eligible for a 10% discount a savings of $285 by emailing Don Trone don@lcfis.org to enroll.}