Ep68 - Rethink: Is There a Massive Opportunity in the Life Insurance Market? – Featuring Tony Steuer

Tony Steuer, a financial readiness advocate and longtime fee-based life insurance consultant, joins Adam Holt and Derek Notman to make the case that life insurance is an underused opportunity for financial advisors. Drawing on more than three decades of reviewing policies for wealth managers, trust officers, and attorneys, Tony breaks down why so many advisors avoid the conversation, and what it takes to bring insurance into a genuinely fiduciary financial plan.

• Why advisors often overlook life insurance opportunities
• Product complexity and regulatory challenges in insurance
• Consumer awareness gaps around policy reviews
• Fee-based insurance consulting as a fiduciary practice
• Practical strategies for RIAs to add insurance value
• Lessons from decades of policy reviews

Full timestamped transcript.‍

Adam, is life insurance a ripe opportunity for advisors? A ripe opportunity. You mean like fruit is ripe? Sure. I mean, I prefer fruit that is ripe. Yes. Okay. So has, has, has, has life insurance gone through this thing where it fell off the vine rotted and then, you know, went into the ground, the seeds and then regrew.

[00:00:56] Derek Notman: And now is it, is it ripe again? Is it, have we kind of come full circle? Wow. That's a really interesting

[00:01:02] Adam Holt: analogy, especially because that was a very like death analogy and you're talking about life insurance. Well, I guess it's reborn, perhaps, perhaps reborn opportunity. That's an interesting question. So I got to ask, why are you asked that question to her?

Well, you and I both started as insurance salesmen.

[00:01:22] Derek Notman: Right.

[00:01:23] Adam Holt: Oh, I hate to say it like that. It sounds like it's horrible, but okay.

[00:01:27] Derek Notman: We were selling life insurance door to door.

[00:01:30] Adam Holt: Okay. No, I was never selling door to door. What are you talking about? I was afraid to go to the door. I was like, how did I get into life insurance?

[00:01:40] Derek Notman: Yes.

[00:01:40] Adam Holt: I know what you mean.

[00:01:41] Derek Notman: You know what I mean? And, and we've seen a massive shift. We've talked about it many times. We, we talk about it at conferences that we've had this massive shift away from product led sales to holistic advice, leading with advice and so forth. And I, I, I have this feeling like we've almost had the pendulum go too far the other way.

And. Are we really being holistic as in are we actually talking about life insurance? Are we having those discussions with our clients? Um, and if we aren't, maybe there's a massive opportunity.

[00:02:17] Adam Holt: I've been saying that there's a massive opportunity for five years. I don't know if anybody heard me. But I, I hope that, uh, we've been ahead of the game because what is clear, Derek, is that this great wealth transfer topic is, is popping up everywhere, everywhere.

What does that mean? It means that the baby boomers are moving their money to the next gen. Well, guess what? A good amount of that money is going to be in the form of, it's going to be in life insurance, death benefits. Right. Nobody's talking about that. Like, think about the amount of death benefit the boomer population has where they bought whole life.

Cause they, you know what everyone talks

[00:02:53] Derek Notman: about what, how many trillions are going to pass? How is that trillions made up? What's the pie chart there? Is that just retirement investment assets? It's not life insurance. So how much is going to, you know, a lot, a lot and, and it's a great, it's a great tool to do it.

But if you don't help your clients with it. And they leave an IRA that's seven figures. Now the next generation's pissed like,

[00:03:23] Adam Holt: Whoa. Yeah, no, that's true. I'm thinking about this now out loud, right? Here it comes. It's coming in a podcast form is that the life insurance benefit that our parents have, or that let's say baby boomer generation has will be a part of the estates of our current ex gen clients.

[00:03:40] Derek Notman: Adam, I. I did some research. And what I find really interesting is that yes, there's talk of this generational wealth transfer and all this money that's going to flow. And if you look at it, you know, so there's something here from the New York Times that a couple of years ago, they produced and baby boomers were projected to leave around 78. 3 trillion in assets to the next generation over, years . And they break it down to real estate and investments and private businesses and so forth. You know, what does not included in that figure? Life insurance, death benefits. And so I did a little bit more research in 2022, for example, just in the U S the total of life and annuity benefits was a hair under 800 billion in one year.

So you go over 10, 20 years, you're dealing with trillions of dollars that we kind of forgot about as part of this. Asset transfer. And where's that money going to go if you're not paying attention to it?

[00:04:50] Adam Holt: Nobody even knows where it's going to go, because nobody's even asking the question about your life insurance or your parents life insurance.

And it's pretty wild asset and it's liquid. It doesn't even require reallocation. So for those of you who are asset gatherers. We're basically saying large checks are going to come into the household or not, right? Because it's been mismanaged. I've seen plenty of policies just implode because nobody checked whether they were going to survive.

Like there's not enough cash value and not paying enough premium. Nobody checked this, let alone the beneficiaries are wrong. So you're totally right, Derek. This is a huge part of the generational wealth transfer. Nobody's talking about. And it's, it's starting to create a blue ocean.

. So if we've, if we really want to deal with, generational wealth transfer, we need to pay attention to the fact that this is a financial instrument. Nobody understands anymore. The agent that sold it is no longer in the business or could care less or there's no relationship. And now we have clients out there and we have prospects that have no clue whether the current products they pay for actually serves them.

And so it begged the question when we were asking this question of ourselves, Who could we interview to talk about life and we couldn't pick someone who was a commission agent that, you know, from day old, who had a bias, we wanted to pick someone who is completely agnostic. And so we found Tony Stoyer, who is a CLU and a licensed actuary and the financial literacy expert speaks on the news all the time, was part of.

The California Department of Insurance curriculum is constantly being interviewed, and we said we got to get his perspective on Life insurance in the current market. And if you do get a chance, I know he's written a book questions and answers on life insurance. It's totally available out there in the marketplace, really technical, but very readable.

[00:06:41] Derek Notman: It totally is. Well, let's hear what Tony has to say today and, um, take it from here.

[00:06:47] Adam Holt Tank: , Tony, thank you so much for joining us on the rethink tank. We're really curious. What's your unique perspective of the financial advice market right now?

[00:06:57] GMT20240827-200156_Recording_avo_1280x720 Steuer: Well,

[00:06:57] Tony Steuer: I think we're seeing some trends in the, , financial advice market that are really good. We're starting to recognize that there's more to it than just the numbers, that there's a real. Sense of people and their culture and their background and what they actually want to achieve. So we're moving away from being strictly product oriented to being goal oriented.

And I think that's, you know, to me, what's really exciting about the future of financial advice.

[00:07:29] Adam Holt Tank: Now you've been focusing on the life insurance marketplace for a good number of years. Now, how have you seen that evolve in the advisory market? Because so many of us have moved to asset management as a primary business. And I would say almost the life insurance. Market has gotten, I don't want to say not ignored, but put in kind of second position by far.

What are you seeing there in the life insurance marketplace?

[00:07:55] Tony Steuer: Well, it's exactly as you say, Adam, is I think there's been a trend away from when they're being a professional life insurance advisors that a lot of, uh, former life insurance agents are financial planners. So I think that's had an impact, but I think the other thing that's had an impact is the products themselves is that risk protection is often overlooked.

But what I've seen is that people oftentimes think like a lot of these products are super complex. And I don't really understand them. I don't want to talk about them. I've had a bad experience with the life insurance industry. So they get overlooked or put to the side. And I think that's a big part of what's going on in the market today.

[00:08:40] Derek Notman Tank: Would you say that that's also a missing opportunity because they're not addressing that? And I mean, does that lead to anything even bigger or more systemic with where the industry is headed because they're not doing that? Is there a larger upcoming challenge because of that?

[00:08:57] Tony Steuer: Well, I think it's turning off a lot of people to the insurance industry as a whole. Like, , if you're on TikTok, there's like many videos about, , be your own banker with life insurance. And so people have this whole perspective about life insurance. Rather than thinking about, insurance is insurance.

The first page of an insurance policy says this is an insurance contract. It doesn't say that it's an investment anywhere. And then what happens in my experience working with wealth management advisors over the years, Department of Insurance, litigation attorneys, is that people say, well, you know, I have these insurance policies, but I have no idea what they work.

The agent told me they would do this. They don't do that. I'm paying. Thousands, tens of thousands. I've seen people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for these insurance policies, and they have no idea what they are, and the policies aren't serving anyone except the insurance agent who made a hefty commission.

But the real secret that nobody wants to talk about is insurance policies are being bought by people who don't know what they're buying. They're being sold by people who don't know what they're selling. You They're being sold by insurance companies who have no idea what they're selling and the regulators don't understand or have the capacity to regulate these products.

You know, insurance

[00:10:18] GMT20240827-200156_Recording_avo_1280x720 Steuer: uh,

[00:10:19] Tony Steuer: regulators are really under resourced as compared to securities regulators, for example.

[00:10:24] GMT20240827-200156_Recording_avo_1280x720 Steuer: I didn't realize it was,

[00:10:26] Derek Notman Tank: Wow. I didn't realize it was, uh, it was that, dire is the right word to say, but that's super interesting that it's not just the consumer that is. In the dark sounds like the whole chain start to finish is there's, there's issues there.

[00:10:44] Tony Steuer: There are, and it's, it's really frustrating is I spent about 30 years as a fee based advisor. And, when working with a fee based financial planner, I'd say, well, you know, did the agent bring this up? Well, no, the agent can bring this up. Well, , can you request what's called an enforced illustration, which is a reprojection of values going to the future based on current values rather than the sales illustration, which is just a bunch of made up numbers at the point of sale.

And, you know, financial planner will say, well, the insurance agent doesn't even know what an enforced illustration is.

[00:11:19] GMT20240827-200156_Recording_avo_1280x720 Steuer: and.

[00:11:20] Tony Steuer: Then I'll say, well, can you get your client to request one from the company and the company will send one and it will take like 10 tries to get one from the company that actually has anything to do with what the client is requesting.

And you see this across the whole distribution chain, that there's these kinds of issues.

[00:11:41] Adam Holt Tank: It's such an important product in the overall, , ecosystem of financial advice, right? No different offense and defense have to play together. We, we have been seeing a lot of, we'll call it consternation about, uh, insurance policies and , the turnover in the agent population, not actually servicing the policies that were sold.

So nobody remembers, well, what, why did we buy this? Why, why do we have this? And, and I can, I can relate to that a lot. Growing up in the insurance industry myself, I started out as an insurance agent and. I guess 26 years ago, uh, with the attempt of getting into the financial planning industry, uh, and became a big fan of the product and so forth, but did see what you're talking about.

So we're curious, , given that knowledge of the obscurity of this black box product, what action steps would you recommend for all of us to start taking now or to start rethinking

[00:12:31] Tony Steuer: Well, I think one is that financial planners need to think about, hey, this is something that my client really needs that. This is a value to my client. And even if I've personally had a negative experience with life insurance, either. With myself or that I've seen my clients have a negative experience that they need to realize that.

Well, one it's, it's one of the pillars of the CFP designation. So it's something you're pretty much supposed to do, but that you need to realize that this is something that can really add value to your clients. And it's also something that nobody else is talking about. And that life insurance is a very valuable thing for your clients.

It's going to provide liquidity to their family. When it's needed the most, so they, you know, so that you can start to take the process of, you know, what insurance policies do you have, at least to make a plan. Of reviewing those policies to see if, further action steps need to be taken.

[00:13:34] Derek Notman Tank: you know, this is making me think, Tony, this actually leads to our final question about what you think might the industry might want to hear and debate, , there's this talk about fee only versus, a UM , versus a commission based thing. And there's, I know it's hotly debated.

And , I'm hearing you say that life insurance is core and taught in CFP, and I agree it is a core component. So who's right and who's wrong and who's responsible? I'm just wondering, , if you can wave a magic wand, how would we fix this? Or what do people need to hear to rethink maybe where their current camp is at?

[00:14:17] Tony Steuer: Well, I think what we need to rethink is, , what's really the core of what we're trying to do. And this gets back to the very 1st thing I said is that we need to get away from thinking about the numbers and the product to what are the goals. The goal of life insurance is to make sure that there's risk protection in the event of something that happens, but what's happened is these products have become so incredibly complex if anybody's ever taken a look at an equity index, universal life policy, for example, where you have the mortality cost, you have participation rates, you have market index rates, you have caps on the policy, you know, you have all this stuff, but really, I mean, When the client comes in, somebody purchases an insurance policy, or they think what they're purchasing is something to take care of their loved ones when they die.

But instead, what they're sold is this incredibly complex vehicle that's got all these possible permutations and things that can happen that it's really unwieldy to manage. And I think as an industry, not only for insurance, but for all of our products, we need to think about what we're doing. What is a client really trying to accomplish and what's the simplest way and the lowest cost way for our clients to accomplish up

[00:15:36] Derek Notman Tank: I almost think about how maybe the product manufacturers need to be a little bit closer to the field. I get, get some consumer feedback instead of just, commission feedback or how easy or hard is this to sell? I get it.

Those are factors, but the ultimate purchaser of the product, if they don't understand it,

[00:15:57] Tony Steuer: I think you see features creep is you see it with technology, you know, look at the iPhone and all the things that are iPhone can do. I, I probably use maybe 1 percent if I'm lucky of the features on my phone, but we see the same thing.

[00:16:11] GMT20240827-200156_Recording_avo_1280x720 Steuer: uh,

[00:16:12] Tony Steuer: With financial products, or, you know, somebody will say, well, you know, wouldn't it be great if the insurance policy could do this and then so they add that feature.

And all of a sudden you have this Frankenstein financial product that really. Has gotten away from what it's supposed to do. At its core, and I think that's the key is that we need to keep it. You know, keep our eye on the ball and what we're really trying to accomplish. And I think that's challenging.

It's easy for me to say, but it's challenging to do in practice.

[00:16:44] Adam Holt Tank: This is great. So what should a financial planner who may not come from the insurance world actually do to start an annual, is there, is there a set process or some resource you can guide us to, to help, uh, to help them follow a framework or recipe,

[00:16:59] Tony Steuer: Yeah, well, of course, if it's okay, I recommend my book questions and answers on life insurance. , I have given some presentations, this podcast is a good example, but I've given some more detailed presentations that I'd be glad to share links to. But, , the basic things you can do is to start the review process.

Check that the parties of the contract are accurate, , Is the beneficiary the right person? I can't tell you how many times I've reviewed an insurance policy, and it's an ex spouse who's the beneficiary. Nobody's really happy with that situation. Um, you know, make sure, you

[00:17:33] Derek Notman Tank: The ex spouse will be happy.

[00:17:35] Tony Steuer: Well, that's true. Okay, so I take that back. There is somebody who would be happy with that. Most people are not happy, , make sure that the coverage is still necessary I've had advisors, , sometimes their clients will have 5 or 10. Insurance policies they've collected over the years.

, are those insurance policies a client still paying? You know, I've had, , clients paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for coverage. They don't need and then if they do have a permanent life insurance policy, have a plan to review it. As I mentioned, you can request what's called an in force illustration from the insurance company.

, if you want to just ping me, I can send you a player plate. Letter that you can send off to the insurance company. But as for that, just see, you know, how the policy is going to perform. Is it going to perform? As expected, not as the agent said it would, because it's never going to perform as the agent said it would.

Uh, that's 1 thing we know about sales illustrations that they're 100 percent wrong from the minute they're generated because they're predicting an uncertain future. Uh, we could get into Monte Carlo here, but that's probably a little bit far for this, but, really. See how the policy is actually going to perform based upon today's values.

And so I think that's something every. Advisor can do.

[00:18:52] Adam Holt: All right. So what did you think about Tony's comments on life insurance market? I, I really

[00:18:58] Derek Notman: like that. He's shining light on this. Uh, it's actually a bit refreshing, you know, funny that we both started insurance and you and I got away from it, uh, a bit, you know, as, as times have changed and the whole industry has done that, but he is spot on and that there's, there's a lot of things that we should be paying attention to.

It really is just as important as, An IRA investment is a 529 accounting, et cetera, et cetera. I, I think we've gotten almost too far away, uh, in focusing on what life insurance is and how valuable it is. How about you? What are you thinking?

[00:19:35] Adam Holt: Yeah, look, it reminded me of the stuff that unfortunately most parties are not talking about.

You know, when he talked about how there's been a shift from product oriented to goal, I mean, it's true. We had to meet our requirements. We could say we were a financial planner all day long, but if we didn't hit our monetary requirements and asset gathering, which was traditionally premium, uh, we got in trouble, right?

We, we, uh, we potentially lose our jobs, right? So we never lost the fact that. You can be, you can be as a planning analyst as much as you want, but if you don't bring them to bacon, don't matter. Um, and I think that that, that mentality is still very much in the mind of a lot of the financial planners who transitioned, uh, over time, but have forgotten how to actually sell life insurance.

And forgotten that they need you because nobody's now got a gun to their head saying, you better sell this live insurance or else you're not going to get quota. And because they don't have to anymore, people are running around without seatbelts. And I think it's a huge miss because we, it drives me crazy when people say I'm a holistic financial planner and I'm like, how come you're coming up red lights and asset map?

They have no protection coverage. Well, really? Oh wow. Wow.

[00:20:41] Derek Notman: That that's cool. You've got some interesting insights because of that. You know, how many advisors haven't, you know, checked off the life insurance box?

[00:20:50] Adam Holt: A boatload of supposedly best interest advisors. Wow. There's over 2. 1 million people in asset map right now.

Those are from advisors , their CFPs mostly. And there are over 400, 000 of those households that couldn't handle the loss of their income. Their entire family would lose their house. It's that bad. Like, well, who sold them the insurance? Who placed it?

Who insured it? Who checked? It's sad, man. And when, when Tony says, Like the shift in advice has really changed. It's moved away from this idea of, I don't want to be a sales person. Don't want to have sales. Just want to retain assets. I get it. It's a great business to retain assets, but it doesn't mean that we're.

We're really actually taking care of the family just because we don't want to sell life insurance anymore.

[00:21:37] Derek Notman: It really is important. And you know, he mentioned it, the CFP, one of the core pieces is insurance. Now I get it. If you don't want to sell insurance or, you know, maybe you grew up in the bank or the wire house channel and you didn't really get, or even like a large RIA, you never really got insurance exposure.

And that's okay. We're not saying everyone has to go sell insurance, but if you're not. Bring someone in who does have the conversation, , just because you don't sell insurance doesn't mean you can't have the conversation, you can still talk about it.

[00:22:13] Adam Holt: Well, what did you think when he talked about how the complexity might be stifling?

What did you think about that? Oh, man, you know, big evolution.

[00:22:21] Derek Notman: You know, I can't really ever remember a client. I have sold thousands of life insurance contracts, and I don't think I ever, I can't recall a client ever asking for more complexity, make this harder for me to understand, right there. It's, it's real simple on their mind.

If I'm not here tomorrow, my kids, my wife, my business are going to struggle. I need to fix that. Cool. Here's this thing called life insurance. It'll fix that for you. The financial part, at least. Yeah, this is why it's funny because we're, especially in my early years, a lot of my colleagues. Similar tenure would go show up at appointments with 20, 30, 50 page illustrations and focus on using the illustration to sell the product.

I never did that at all. I kept it in the folder. I talked about it conceptually. Hey, do you want to see how this thing works a little bit? Oh, okay, cool. Here, here's some pages here. I'll leave the illustration with you, but we never focused on how the sausage was made. We just focus on what it did. As he says, focus on the goals, goals of life insurance.

And I had great sales because of it. Cause that's what your clients don't want to know, like internal rate of return and mortality and riders and step ups and indexing. And no, does this take care of my wife and kids tomorrow? If I'm not here. That's the goal, right?

[00:23:49] Adam Holt: That's true. Well, I mean, look, there's this constant debate of whether term or permanent insurance makes sense.

And our attitude was always, always calculate what the, what the need of capital is, decide whether the client could afford. Or cared about having a permanent solution or a term or temporary solution. Right. And then when you went to term, which went, you know, 80, 90 percent of that, that need was met from term insurance for the period that made sense from an a rated convertible company next, just get it done today, you can do this.

Literally two day underwriting. If not same day, if you have an easy underwritten case, I think a lot of, a lot of firms have gotten rid of their underwriting. I know my firm that I started still has a full underwriting team because it is a lot of work to do insurance. It's not an easy thing. And I think from a business standpoint, a lot of advisors have said, I'm going to jettison that effort because it's not necessarily recurring revenue.

Business is difficult. People are not in great health. I'm always dealing with, you know, where they want to lie on the app. Like there's a, there's a lot of, I think. I think aggravation on the business side associated with life insurance, but then of course, Derek, it's creating a huge opportunity because there's a big void.

There are very few professional insurance advisor anymore. Look at this. Tony is a fee based insurance advisor for how many years? He's got like 30 years in the business. He gets hired by. You know, all of these experts that come in and do, you know, actual, uh,

[00:25:11] Derek Notman: yeah.

[00:25:11] Adam Holt: Testimony around it. And, and you can hire someone like that today.

And an RIA can bring that person in and pay them a fee to go do the work that they don't want to do.

[00:25:20] Derek Notman: Yeah. How cool is that? And it goes, it goes right to the whole question here today is, is life insurance, the, the new blue ocean or opportunity is, is that the place now that we can focus because so many people have gotten away from it?

Oh, life insurance, salesmen are bad. Life insurance is bad. Oh, by term invested difference, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think we've gotten so concerned with those, those things that we forgot why it was there in the first place. And let's face it, life insurance has been around a lot longer than Roth IRAs,

[00:25:49] Adam Holt: you know, or

[00:25:51] Derek Notman: whatever you want to call it.

Right. Right.

[00:25:52] Adam Holt: No, but look, it isn't, it's, isn't it the case, like, you know, you're in traffic and, you know, three lanes of traffic deep are just sitting there, but you see this open lane on the right, you figure everybody's getting out of that lane. They're moving over to the left or right. Right. And then you like, once you get up to, you realize that people were just all just following the crowd.

They could have been in that speedy lane the whole time, but it was like, Oh, don't touch it. It's got cooties. And, and I, you know what I'm saying? They're just following the crowd. Meanwhile, , advisors who recognize that there's a huge gap there can start delivering real value. And frankly, I think what we've seen is that so many of the ex insurance advisors are now getting into wealth management.

If you don't address life insurance as a conversation. As a, as a matter of being part of your process, I got to believe some of these other advisors who do know it are going to take your AUM business because. They can do both.

[00:26:42] Derek Notman: They're, they're not just

[00:26:44] Adam Holt: testing the engine. They're testing the brakes and the seat belts and the airbags.

Cause they know you got your family in that car and they're not going to let you drive it off with just saying, Hey, look, your engine souped up. I didn't check the brakes. Like that's, that's a huge mistake. And I think it's a great opportunity to. For those that realize it

[00:26:59] Derek Notman: great analogy, , I'm glad Tony's shedding light on it.

There's definitely been a change. What are some things that you think that, those listening today can do to maybe try to, adjust a little bit how they're working with their clients? Well, I think that, that one of the things

[00:27:13] Adam Holt: that Tony brought up is , this complexity, especially on the permanent life side.

And I don't know if you know, do you know Bobby Samuelson? Uh, that name rings a bell, but I don't know. Well, he's considered, I'm for those, the people that are really deep in the insurance space, he's like an expert that engineer, he takes apart these policies. And I, and we've hired him every single year to come speak to us for an hour and a half, uh, to a group of individuals in this space.

And it's unbelievable. He tells us that these policies are so complicated that it's true. Tony said it, the regulators can't even figure out how they're coming up with these. Wow. And it seems to me that all the features that have been added to these permanent policies that have certain tax benefits, I get it, and have certain, , riders in this condition and that condition, if it's a full moon and you have a long term care event and your brother's name is Bob, like in that situation, we know we can pay you a benefit, but if one of those things is not true, then you're skunked.

And what's happening, especially with the index universal life contracts is that, you know, the stock market's been doing great. What happens if that turns? And I think we're starting to see that the mechanics and the, and the, the math that was driving it always assumed the market was going to go up. If it turns around, it could be, it could be leveraged down.

And that's the, that's, I think the challenge is that when we, when a lot of the industry created these crazy concepts, cause they're like, Hey, I can sell it better if you make it really complicated because it can do all these things, it solves every single problem. It's kind of like you buy the iPhone for its capacity and you use 1 percent of it.

Like you said. But by the way, you have no battery life because, cause this thing can't last. There's just too much going on that they've never tested. And it's not like true whole life. Like it's boring. And grandpa had it at work. We're talking about some really modern products. And I think it could actually cause a lot of pain in the space.

[00:29:02] Derek Notman: I think it, it doesn't need to be so complex. And that's what he's saying. So make it easier, make it simpler. Well, that's,

[00:29:10] Adam Holt: but that's my follow on is like, so what do you do? What do you do with that information? The advisors. Should be doing annual reviews. And, and if you don't do policy reviews with your clients to uncover the fact that they own these complex monsters, or if it's a complex and it makes sense, it's still makes sense.

I want to know that it still makes sense based on what you care about today. And I think we all need to be the catalyst for that going forward. That's no question.

How do you

[00:29:34] Derek Notman: do it, Derek? Annual reviews definitely. But go a little bit deeper, uh, than just that, , so for example, I just met with my, my top client and she's like, can you look at this thing?

And like, so I manage all of their money, huge client client for years. And she brings out this statement for old life insurance policy she's had for years that she never told me about before. So we added it to the asset map. It's on there now, but now the homework assignment is let's go get the enforce illustration.

Who is the beneficiary on this? What type of insurance is it? And so forth. Do we still need it? And that was even their question. Do we need it? And so, yeah, great to have the review. Do you have life insurance in general as your family, your business protected, but go deeper. Find out more information. We would do the same.

If you were looking at rolling over a retirement account or wanted a second opinion on your investment allocation, we would want all the details, do it with your insurance as well.

[00:30:33] Adam Holt: I think, look, for those of you that don't know, you, you need to order what's called an in force illustration. He mentioned it, an in force illustration, , Or just getting the declaration page is a great start is, is really a requirement.

Almost every client we know loses their policy. They don't have the original document. If you didn't sell it or place it, you don't have a copy of this thing. So you got to write in paper. There's very little digital submission to this. Write in paper, a letter, a good old fashioned letter on letterhead that says, please do this.

And Tony even offered, if you reach out to him on LinkedIn, that he'll send you his version. It's a, it's boilerplate. Okay. And I think it's a really great place to start. Cause it says, Hey, illustrate it this way. Cause there's a billion ways you could illustrate it. Can you imagine actually running for somebody, a financial plan and say, okay, commit to this plan for the rest of your life.

And nobody remembers what it is, but you're committed like the premium plan. So you have to reillustrate this stuff. And, and that's an important aspect. I also think it's really important. If you don't have this capacity on your team and your financial planning team or your advisory, whatever, you're not going to build it in house, please build relationships, uh, with those that are experts that you trust.

They got to trust them because we all know, because this stuff is so complicated, it winds up being a trust decision, not necessarily a knowledge decision. Uh, and so you got to make sure that you're working with people who actually know what they're selling. And promoting and can actually do the due diligence on, on, on rating and all this other stuff that company's going to be there in 20 years when you need that to pay this claim.

So I think those are really important aspects.

[00:32:01] Derek Notman: One thing I would add to when you're requesting that policy or the enforced policy stuff, ask for , a full policy brief, because they've got like a one pager policy brief, but you can ask for a full policy brief, which usually is a couple of two, three, four pages, and it's got all types of information on whether if there's dividends, what's the story with the dividends, what's going on with investments, if it's an investment based contract or something like that, it gives you a much deeper view of the policy versus just a real basic one page brief. So that's something else that I would recommend doing.

You know, I

[00:32:35] Adam Holt: realized in this conversation, in the way that Tony might be perceived in this case, it's also that we might be anti life insurance. And I think , the irony is that we don't. The opposite is true. I'm actually very promotive of insurance and I really love the business because it is one of those areas where people are not educated and it allows me to educate them.

And I hope advisors listen to this and say, yeah, this is my opportunity to be a star for them in an area that's really not a fun topic and also complex and has a history and a legacy of being sales culture. That being said, as Derek already said, it is a blue ocean and with respect to permanent and term insurance, I have to tell you of all the people I know, I am probably the most overinsured person there is.

I literally bought more term and life insurance as much as they would let me get because I'm protecting my family on my entire capacity of earnings. But I also have some insurance. And I also have some overfunded Investment style, tax leveraged policies that I have bought for myself and I've actually fully funded.

And one of the things is that when you use these tools over long periods of time, it's like anything. We don't know Derek, which, which one is going to work out. What is the term going to work out better than the permanent? I don't know.

[00:33:47] Derek Notman: Yeah.

[00:33:47] Adam Holt: Most valuable insurance is the one that actually pays a claim.

Okay. But until that point in time, it's all a confidence game. It's like just buying security blankets so that I know my family's going to be okay, or as you said, my business obligations, et cetera. And I think that's an important stuff. Just make sure whatever the product is, it makes sense. And it fits for the client based upon what matters to them.

And that they understand it. They can't enough. And I guarantee you, they don't understand the SMA that I told them to.

[00:34:17] Derek Notman: No, they have no idea, you know, but they can repeat back. Okay. Adam, this insurance is going to be for this amount. If I die tomorrow, family is taken care of. Got it. Thank you. Let's now talk about retirement planning, you know, or

[00:34:28] Adam Holt: whatever.

It's a check the box. Let's check the box. Let's get people. Okay. And then let's micromanage actually let the details of which types of policies we're going to use based upon their tax structure or their ownership, et cetera, et cetera. Right. There's lots of rooms.

[00:34:41] Derek Notman: I would add too, if you're an advisor that doesn't want to Check the implementation box of insurance like you'll have a conversation, but you don't want to get licensed.

Fine. Find someone that can that you trust. Like you said earlier. Absolutely. Right? Like the other advisor on my team. He does have his insurance licenses. So if something needs to happen, boom, right? So we can get it done or even your firm. Right. People on the insurance side, right? So there's, there's, there's ways that you can do that.

Find a trusted source, knows what they're doing, has options. You don't have to be an expert, but you got to have the conversation.

[00:35:17] Adam Holt: Right.

[00:35:17] Derek Notman: And I look,

[00:35:17] Adam Holt: that's a great point. You know, we can close with this is that, you know, there's, there are certain situations where an advisor is captive to a certain carrier.

Okay. That's one model. Maybe they know that product set better than anybody, right? Like I only sell Nike. Okay. You know, Nike shoes, every model there is. And then there are those that have a, obviously an Emporium where they can go to the, to the marketplace and try to shop and you got to decide what's right for you, you know, footlocker, footlocker.

That's right. Is that where you go for your shoes?

[00:35:45] Derek Notman: Or you go to the Amazon store? I'm old school man. I don't even have an Amazon account. You don't have an Amazon, you don't have one or

[00:35:52] Adam Holt: an

[00:35:52] Derek Notman: Amazon account?

[00:35:54] Adam Holt: Nope. No, I don't. Okay, great. We're taking FinTech advice from you. I think , Classic.

What's Amazon? I still buy books. Classic shoe Cobbler doesn't go to Foot Locker. I don't either. Actually. . All right. Well, with that, let's thank Tony for his work. I was really fun to have another topic. We haven't talked about in quite a while. So thank you, Tony, for what you're doing. Derek, any closing thoughts for us?

[00:36:18] Derek Notman: Yeah, everyone that's listening. Thanks again for your time. We appreciate it. , sorry. It's been a little while since we recorded, you had the summer doldrums there, but we're back in it now and take something you heard today and implement it, share it with somebody else, make someone's life a little bit better with something you learned today.

[00:36:34] Adam Holt: Love it. That's great. Don't forget to subscribe. And of course, we'll see you on the next podcast.

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