by MaxHerr » Tue Jun 22, 2010 01:45 am
The following message just landed in my personal email inbox. Don't know whether to post this here or in the Insurance Fraud forum, but this ought to crimp a few feathers:
Obviously, I'm not going to supply the link.
Yeah, LIFE INSURANCE . . . The "one sale to retirement" product. If it were true, wouldn't everybody want to be "doing it". Imagine, no premiums to pay, no premium financing, no life settlements or other "confusing, complicated methods." Sounds like FREE INSURANCE!! How hard is that to sell? (So hard, it's unlawful in every state!)
This one's a first for my inbox at verizon.net.
I’m involved with a life insurance strategy that’s so powerful, many agents could retire with just one sale. No kidding.
It’s easy to sell life insurance when the buyer doesn’t have to pay a premium for it. This system does not use premium financing, life settlements or any other confusing, complicated methods. It’s simple and easy for a prospect to understand and easier yet to sell.
There are qualified prospects in your area available and need to identify competent agents quickly. For more information and details, click here:
Obviously, I'm not going to supply the link.
Yeah, LIFE INSURANCE . . . The "one sale to retirement" product. If it were true, wouldn't everybody want to be "doing it". Imagine, no premiums to pay, no premium financing, no life settlements or other "confusing, complicated methods." Sounds like FREE INSURANCE!! How hard is that to sell? (So hard, it's unlawful in every state!)
This one's a first for my inbox at verizon.net.
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 02:12 am Post Subject:
(sigh)
If I were a retired or perhaps soon to be retired individual with a large cash position could I not use high early cash value WL or perhaps SPWL to buy life insurance? If the agent illustrates the idea as a repositioning of assets instead of paying a premium is he really a crook?
High early cash value products are used in business planning situation often when a business has a large amount of cash on hand, or has low expenditures with higher cash flows to essentially store the cash in life insurance products while acquiring life insurance.
If an agent suggests using a SPIA, or bond yield to pay insurance premiums is he a crook?
What about agents that perform 1035 exchanges and use cash values to pay premiums? I've seen a lot of companies use that as an option for premium payment. Are they crooks for their zero premium life policy?
So this one's a little gimmicky in it's approach and extremely over exaggerated in it's profitability, but nothing they've mentioned is illegal.
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 02:21 am Post Subject:
BNTRS, don't disagree with your position for the most part...BUT :arrow:
Each of your propositions involves premium in one form or another. The scam Max posted specifically stated
It’s easy to sell life insurance when the buyer doesn’t have to pay a premium for it.
The scammer said that it's "easy to sell life insurance when there's no premium." What life insurance do you know of that requires no premium, period? I don't know of any. Each of your examples requires premium to be paid, but I want an example of "free" life insurance. I'm not talking about that stuff you get from your bank that gives you 30-90 days of "free" accidental death coverage or something like that. I'm talking true, free insurance.
Oh yeah, it IS illegal to give free insurance in every state that I know of. I don't know 'em all, but I know 36 of them. Considered an illegal inducement. I do know of some carriers, for example, that will give you the first month free, usually some type of "Gerber Grow-Up" program or something like that for kids, but that's about it and they have to give it to everyone that buys and it's approved by the state DOI.
InsTeacher 8)
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 02:36 am Post Subject:
INS Teacher, you have a point in that I assumed this was mostly a scheme concerned with using cash from one position and using it to finance life insurance while using cash values to represent a zero net cost to acquire the insurance. I'd doubt highly a method for "selling" life insurance could exist that was profitable enough to "retire after one sale" that involved giving life insurance away for free.
On the topic of giving it away, I seem to remember a campaign Massmutual ran a few years ago to give low income family in New York state free life insurance. Don't know anything about it besides that.
Actually I just searched it and found something.
http://www.massmutual.com/mmfg/pdf/lifebridge_eligibility.pdf
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 04:12 am Post Subject:
BNTRS, I checked out the link, and it seems to be a really cool program. MassMutual is a reputable carrier as well, and this looks like a really nice way to help lower income people secure their kid's college education.
Notice that it's a 10-year level term policy, there's underwriting involved, and the beneficiary is automatically the trust established by the carrier which will be used to pay for the education. It's also pretty cool that you can use the death benefit to pay for pretty much any post-secondary educational need. There are other qualifiers, but it's definitely free-insurance!
I would imagine that this has absolutely been approved by the DOI(s) and has been granted some exception due to the "charitable nature" of the program. Nonetheless, it's sweet. I had no idea it existed, hope it still does, and plan on turning on some friends I know to it. Thanks for pointing it out. I encourage everyone to check out the link as well- it's seriously worth it.
InsTeacher 8)
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 07:07 am Post Subject:
Here's some "stuff" from the linked website:
You're probably wondering how this strategy works.
To put it simply, this strategy uses life insurance to create an immediate benefit to the client. While life insurance is traditionally used to provide a benefit at someone's death, in this system, an immediate benefit is provided to the client and the client pays no insurance premium out-of-pocket. In essence the client gets paid to do the strategy, that's why it's so powerful.
This strategy automatically overcomes the two big objections to selling life insurance:
Objection One: I don't want to pay expensive premiums
Objection Two: I don't want to pay for something that doesn't pay a benefit until I die
Just so you're clear, this strategy:
* DOES NOT use financed life insurance premiums - there are no bank loans of any kind
* DOES NOT use life settlements - policies are never sold or offered for sale
* DOES NOT require that the client take risks or die before a certain date in order for the strategy to work.
And here's what their "webinar" offers:
If you attend the Preview meeting to see this system, here's what you'll learn:
* How to Make Only One Sale and Get a Minimum of 10 New Clients - Earn 6 or Even 7 Figures with Only 3 or 4 Sales per Year
* How 1 Licensee Put 17 Affluent Prospects in a Room, Having Never Met Them Before, and, after Spending Only 1 Hour with Them Wrote 17 Life Insurance Applications Resulting in a 100% Close - and the Prospects Completed the Applications for Her!
* How to Sell 5-20 High Premium Life Insurance Policies All at the Same Time to Highly Qualified and Enthusiastic Prospects in a Group Setting
* The Stories of 3 Licensees Who Each Had Clients with Net Worth in Excess of $100 Million Seek Them Out and Ask to Buy Life Insurance as a Result of This System
* How One Licensee Got 18 Immediate Referrals From a High Net Worth Client Without Even Asking and the Client Made the Introduction Calls for the Agent!
* How to Turn Every New Client into your Raving Advocate Literally Recruiting an Average of 13 New Clients for You
I once knew a blind agent who memorized the life application and "guided" his clients to fill out the app, so that's not so farfetched. And I have my health insurance clients fill out their own apps.
Now getting that call from the $100 Million net worth client . . . hasn't happened yet.
I'm still having trouble balancing the "How to Sell 5-20 High Premium Life Insurance Policies All at the Same Time" with the "buyer doesn't have to pay a premium" statement in the original email and elsewhere on the website.
But at least "the Client Made the Introduction Calls for the Agent!" solves the dilemma of the Do Not Call list!
Oh well . . .
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 04:02 pm Post Subject: insurance
Ok...........if the Life Insurance is "free", then how can an Insurance Agent make any money off the policy (commission)? Obviously they can't. And, if they can't, how can they retire making no money at all? Life Insurance with no premium?...that would be a good trick. I'm wondering how many people have fallen for this scam already?
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 06:55 pm Post Subject:
Max, notice that the website doesn't say "no premiums". It says, "no premium out of pocket". This is obviously very different.
The MassMutual program is completely legit. It is 100% free. There are criteria that must be met and it is underwritten. By "free", I mean that the insured doesn't pay anything. I do think that a premium does get paid and MassMutual pays the premium to itself.
Believe it or not, it is very difficult to sell free life insurance. I can routinely sell multi-million dollar 5 figure premium policies, but I can't get a single struggling mom to apply for a free policy. They can't believe that there isn't a catch. There isn't one.
This also isn't some sort of sucker some one with something free scam. The people who qualify for this coverage aren't the people that an agent would want for a client and agents are forbidden from trying to get additional business from people in this program. It's 100% charitable and pays no commission.
Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 12:26 am Post Subject:
Yeah that was my understanding.
To the original topic, yes I'd say this pitch is way over inflated. But moving assets from one place to another and having the other be life insurance is a common practice employed by lots of agents and lots of clients.
The scam here is the money agents are going to pay the people who are going to teach them how to do this, when they have everything they need already to make it happen, except for maybe a more experienced agent to work with.
Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 02:23 am Post Subject:
Max, all I can say is... I can't say anything. More to the point, I don't know what to say. I'm "typeless."
My brain immediately went to that good ol' boy Charles Ponzi, hero of the age-old Ponzi scheme. If I knew how to insert an image, I'd put a picture of him in this post. (Can someone pm me and tell me how to do that?)
While this doesn't reek Ponzi, the shadings are there. Any producer that falls for this rhetoric deserves what he gets. As well, if you are successful at pulling off this game, you're probably a pretty slimy person in any number of ways. Then my brain went to the ethical values surrounding the idea. I have sold I don't know how many contracts in my life and never once did any of those illustrated scenarios posted by Max have ever happened to me. Wait...let me take another look... nope, nothing
I've had plenty of referrals, I've had calls from multi-millionaires- I've been in one room with a whole bunch of people, but not to sell a number of policies to 15 different people who are going to talk eachother into buying the stuff I'm offering, but to close deals that involved a lot of people. I've closed a few buy-sell agreements where everybody and their uncle had to be in the room- the principals, lawyers, accountants, producers, managers, etc. It was like someone was having a baby and everyone wanted to be in the delivery room.
So, once again I say- the only way to a successful career in this biz is to work hard, have a good ethical stance, take care of your clients and be a student of your industry. Pretty simple. Go the slimy route and you'll get everything you deserve. It's generally not a matter of if, but when these people get nailed. Good. They put a black eye on our industry and frankly, should be hung and dried. Sorry about the rant, the brain is going a million miles an hour.
Max- send me the link you got, assuming it's clean and you're cool with it. I want to take a look.
InsTeacher 8) [/img]
Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 02:39 pm Post Subject: insurance
"No premium out of pocket." That's basically saying it's free. But,......what Insurance is free!!?? Usually you have to pay SOMETHING toward it. GUEST...can you explain what you mean by, "people who qualify for this coverage aren't the people an agent would want for a client."..why not? You have to admit, though,..if a company say 'something is free', there USUALLY is a catch.
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