Positioning Whole Life as the Jump-Start Toward Financial Betterment

by | Jan 5, 2016 | Insurance, Whole Life

In our previous article, we introduced an approach aimed at getting retirees and pre-retirees to overcome inertia and take a key step towards achieving financial security in retirement.  In this article, we turn our focus onto younger individuals and families who should start pursuing long-term financial growth and security, but seem overwhelmed and unable to move forward. 

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A Broader Positioning for Whole Life:  Nascent Financial Planning

When whole life insurance is presented to young families, the pitch is typically framed around protection:  if the unexpected happens, the death benefit can help replace the family’s loss of income.  In addition, whole life’s other benefits are also usually cited to enhance the product’s value in the prospect’s mind.

We are recommending broadening this positioning by heightening the emphasis on the “other benefits” and portraying whole life as a simple first (or early) step toward overall financial planning.  This positioning can be effective with young individuals as well as with families.

A Classic Problem/Solution Approach

The positioning we are suggesting lends itself well to problem/solution selling:

  • Problem  Spotlighting the various short-term and long-term financial concerns facing the prospect —  protection, accumulation, volatility, liquidity, taxes, etc. — and empathizing with the prospect’s sense of being overwhelmed and confused about how to get started addressing all those issues.
  • Solution  Presenting a whole life policy as an apt combination of financial opportunities in a single simple product.
WHY YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE TROUBLE GETTING STARTED ON THE ROAD TO FINANCIAL SECURITY WHY WHOLE LIFE INSURANCE CAN BE AN EFFECTIVE JUMP-STARTER
Complexity & Confusion The Simplicity of a Single Product
With so many issues to address and so many financial products to choose from, young individuals and families are typically overwhelmed.  The result is often confusion and indecisiveness, if not total shutdown. Being able to deal with multiple needs and concerns – protection, accumulation, volatility, liquidity, etc. – in a single product can help make the initial decision-making easier for younger people and help overcome their financial-planning inertia.
Short-term Focus Piggy-Backing Long-Term Solutions onto Immediate Protection
It’s human nature to focus on the here-and-now rather than the future. So generally, as young people strive to deal with their immediate financial necessities and desires, the last thing on their mind is preparing for their retirement or planning their legacy. By providing benefits such as cash value growth in addition to the core benefit of protection, whole life coverage begins addressing the long-term need for wealth accumulation, which younger people are often unable to focus on.
Fear of Market Volatility Guarantees
Like everyone else, young prospects face the realities of today’s investment marketplace: fixed income offering miniscule yields and equities exhibiting substantial (some would say, unprecedented) levels of volatility. With guarantees on the cash value and death benefit, whole life offers a safe haven from market volatility.
The Need for Liquidity Flexible Access to Cash Value
People generally want to know that they’ll be able to access their money when they might need it. While whole life insurance represents a long-term commitment, it does feature some tax-advantaged ways to access the policy’s cash value over time.
Wavering Discipline “Forced” Savings
Even when an individual or family starts down the path of saving/investing regularly for the future, the course often becomes difficult to sustain. As new needs or wants arise, the savings routine frequently breaks down. Like paying off a mortgage, owning a whole life policy takes a slice of the insured’s paycheck out of their hands each month before they can spend it. Month after month, year after year, that money is working behind the scenes for them and their family.
Not Enough Money Interim Convertible Strategy
Younger people are generally in the early stages of the age-earnings cycle. At the same time, they face the start-up costs of family life as they seek to rent or buy a suitable home and raise children, which often means there’s not much discretionary cash left over to save or invest. Where income is too constrained to cover the premiums on a whole life policy with an adequate death benefit, an individual or family can opt for the affordability of a convertible term policy. They would get the immediate protection they need plus the opportunity to convert to a permanent whole life policy — based on the insured’s current health profile — when their income situation improves.

 

Positioning whole life as the flexible, affordable financial solution for young families in no way implies that whole life should substitute for 401(k) participation or other employee retirement plans available to the prospect.  But where the prospect does participate in a retirement plan, whole life can be positioned as a sound, complementary early step toward achieving a secure financial future.

Copyright © 2016, IQ Financial Marketing Corp | New York, NY

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