January 2019

January 24, 2019

Email Security in the Life Insurance Brokerage Arena

apistemplate HIPPA, Security, Technology, Uncategorized

Email is secure, right? Well, maybe, sometimes, and maybe not.

Is a lot of unsecure email finding its way into the wrong hands? Umm no, probably not, but it could.

What’s the big deal? Well, if you send an email and it ends up in the wrong hands, plenty! Fines, lawsuits and other penalties are possible if sensitive information you send (and maybe receive) gets into the wrong hands.

How do I protect myself? Ahah, that’s the issue at hand.

Regular email, sent from many of the major email providers, have no guarantee of security. The providers that do offer security are usually in the form of TLS. Keeping it simple, TLS works great if you have it and so does the recipient on the other end. The problem is most TLS is set up as opportunistic. That means that it will go through secure if TLS exists on both sides, but if not, it will still go through as an unsecure email. There are websites, such as checktls.com, where you could go and see if your recipient has TLS, but few senders check before they send sensitive email. TLS can be configured to only go through if the recipient has it, but that can be problematic if you need to get something to someone with an unsecure account. Many believe that just sending a TLS encrypted email covers your liability, but that is not clear. At the very least, you should be using a provider that encrypts with TLS, even if you use additional security.

By Tony Cravitz, CLU

January 15, 2019

The Life Settlement Market Is Alive and Well!

apistemplate Life Settlement, Uncategorized

For a while, after the financial crisis, the life settlement market had become non-existent as investors were licking their wounds and life expectancy was discovered to be longer than anticipated in many cases. We have recently completed several cases and are about to wrap up another using a top life settlement brokerage firm that has access to all the registered buyers in a given state. Using an auction process they are able to maximize the offers that your clients receive. Cases that would not have received offers a few years ago are now getting a substantial payout. Recently life expectancy rates have changed, but we are still seeing competitive offers made.

Both recent cases were older males, 89, with UL policies where the cash values were already stripped from their policies and the policies would lapse if a substantial premium was not paid. The insureds involved did not wish to make the premium payment and thus both were perfect opportunities for a life settlement where they could walk away with a substantial amount on policies that would have been allowed to lapse.

In another case we got a substantial settlement for a male in his seventies whose policy had been affected by changing mortality rates imposed by the carrier.

All three cases led to substantial payouts to the insureds and nice commissions for the agents. If you have an elderly client having trouble making premium payments or who no longer has a need for their insurance, and has some health issues that may limit their life expectancy, consider looking into life settlements.

By Allen Bader and Tony Cravitz, CLU