"Distorted Values"
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"Distorted Values"
While the Armstrong Commission’s non-forfeiture values addressed the outright “theft” of policyholder assets by insurance companies, “endowment at age 100” distorts the accumulated cash value available to the policyholder. Let’s consider an over-simplified example. Assume a $500,000 whole-life policy; the insured is age 75. The policy currently has a guaranteed cash value of $100,000. Also assume the insured suffers from severe health problems and has approximately one year to live. Looking at this situation in a little different light: the policyholder could sell the policy to the insurer today for $100,000 or collect $500,000 in a year. Holding the policy for that last year results in a dramatic annual return of 400%! Obviously there is a distortion between these values -- a distortion caused by two factors: an assumption of perfect health resulting in endowment at age 100 and the fact that there is only one purchaser, i.e., the insurance company. Now suppose there is a purchaser willing to buy the policy today for $350,000. The purchaser, who is responsible for any future premium payments, names himself as beneficiary. When the insured dies -- perhaps in a year, perhaps sooner, perhaps later -- the purchaser collects the death benefits and earns a return on his investment. The original policyholder is relieved of future premium payments and receives a quarter million dollars more than the cash value offered by the insurance company; money that can be invested or used immediately for other purposes. Granted, the original beneficiary receives nothing under the policy. And that is a trade-off the original policyholder must consider -- but it is an alternative that may be attractive to many policyholders.
Since insurance companies’ “guaranteed cash values” are based on a life expectancy of age 100 -- which statistically speaking very few of us reach -- they undervalue the “true” value of that policy. That distortion is even more pronounced when the insured’s health is impaired, as in the earlier example. The insurance companies’ monopsony power -- in essence, they are the only game in town -- allows them to enforce a “below-market” valuation of their policies based on the insured‘s perfect health. Policyholders are given a “take it or leave it” choice. Approximately 40% of life policies issued in the U.S. terminate without paying out a death benefit -- in other words, 4 out of 10 policies are “bought back” by the insurance companies at “below-market” prices.
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