The Dominant Life Insurance Product
July 23, 2012 
1 Comment
Life insurance has been around for centuries and comes in many shapes and sizes. Throughout the history of life insurance, there has usually been a prevailing “most popular” life product for any given period of time. For instance, in the 1960′s and 1970′s, whole life was the predominant life product by far. In the 1980′s, interest rates took off and so did universal life. After almost two decades of whole life being the life product of choice, the 80′s created a perfect storm for universal life to take the stage in the limelight. The next decade, the 1990′s, saw a huge bull market so it is no surprise to hear that variable life became the top seller for that period. And the last decade (2000 – 2010) gave way to universal life with secondary guarantees as variable life took a back seat after a couple stock market corrections.
So that brings us to today’s life insurance environment. Can you guess what the dominant life product for this decade is? If you said there is NO dominant life product, then you would be correct. Today’s life insurance market is all about variety and choice. There are six very popular life options with not one single one standing out among the rest. The leaders today are Universal Life, Term Life, Whole Life, Universal Life with Secondary guarantees, Indexed Universal Life, and Variable Universal Life with Guarantees.
It will be interesting to see if any one life product makes a move to stand out as the top seller for the remainder of the decade? In the meantime, both consumers and advisors can feel lucky that there are so many relevant and popular options for life insurance.
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