Most people who own Life Insurance are overpaying for it. If your insurance policy is two or more years old, and/or you are paying more than $10,000 per year in insurance premiums, you are at risk of utilizing an "under performing" product. Why$%: Improvements in insurance products and pricing, underwriting technology and mortality assumptions, and changes in the insurance marketplace, have created large discrepancies among the performance of various policies. Unfortunately, a lack of information, along with hurdles to "comparison shopping", often results in higher premium payments coupled with lower death benefits.
A simple solution to this problem is a thorough, independent, third-party audit of existing insurance. For reasons that will become clear, an individual insurance provider or financial advisor is quite simply technologically incapable of adequately performing an audit (as opposed to a "policy review"). You are little better off if you use a Trustee. According to a study in the May 2003 issue of Trusts :%$amp; Estates, only 16.5% had a formal process for reviewing their trusts' life insurance policies. The GOOD news$%: According to one auditor, over 60% of the cases examined resulted in a significant -- greater than 30% -- improvement recommendation. In other words, you are likely to lower your premiums or increase your death benefits by more than 30%, by simply "scheduling a consult". The remainder of this article will be devoted to a description of the type of information you should demand of your auditor, along with a brief case study.