Washington National Adds Income Protection Term Life: Life Moves

Washington National Insurance Company has introduced a term life insurance product that pays death benefits in the form of a Monthly Income Protection benefits stream.

The policy is designed to pay the beneficiaries a series of monthly benefits over several years, rather than one big lump sum, according to Washington National.

(Related: SBLI Adds Final Expense Whole Life: Life Products)

An employer sponsor can pay extra to provide a modest lump-sum death benefit, ranging from $10,000 to $25,000, to help the beneficiaries with funeral expenses and other final expenses.

The new policy will be available in 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, according to Washington National.

Washington National is a subsidiary of CNO Financial Group Inc. It specializes in selling supplemental health and life products aimed at middle-income Americans.

The company sells the products to individuals through agents and by offering coverage at the worksite.

Haven Life Insurance Agency LLC — an arm of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company — introduced a life insurance policy that pays death benefits as a stream, rather than in the form of one lump sum, in early 2020. A MassMutual subsidiary, C.M. Life,  says it developed the policy together with SCOR Global Life, a reinsurer.

In other life insurance moves:

The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, New York, is offering a care conversion option rider along with term life insurance.

The rider guarantees that an insured who converts a term life policy into a permanent policy will be able to get a long-term care (LTC) rider with the permanent policy, according to Guardian.

The rider eliminates the risk that Guardian riders might reject a policyholder’s effort to buy an LTC rider along when converting a term life policy into a permanent policy, Guardian says.

Guardian is offering the LTC access rider at issue along with the Guardian Level Term 10, 15, 20 and 30 policies.

The rider will be effective for the first five policy years, or for 10 years when an extended conversion rider is purchased.

Guardian is writing the term life policy through iThe Guardian Insurance & Annuity Company Inc. , a Delaware corporation.

Western and Southern Financial Group, Cincinnati, is working with Afficiency Inc., New York, to offer new, simplified issue whole life and disability insurance policies through Afficiency’s digital insurance sales system.

Afficiency will promote the system through worksite marketing programs, and the policies involved will be issued by Western and Southern’s Gerber Life Insurance Company unit. Western & Southern acquired Gerber Life from  Nestlé S.A. at the end of 2018.

Lincoln Financial Group, Radnor, Pennsylvania, has introduced two indexed universal life (IUL) policies who want to use IUL policies in retirement income planning or LTC planning arrangements.

The new policies are new versions of its Lincoln WealthAccumulate IUL and Lincoln WealthPreserve IUL policies.

The investment index menu available with the new policies includes the Fidelity AIM Dividend Indexed Account and the S&P 500 Performance Trigger Indexed Account.

In related news, Lincoln is introducing a new LTC rider. Lincoln variable universal life purchasers who buy the new LTC rider can use the rider pay for home care as well as care in an LTC facility.

An insured who has the rider can use the LTC benefits as soon as the client is deemed eligible for the benefits.

Another feature, a transitional care assistance benefit, can help clients cover the cost of a limited amount of professional care when family members or friends are providing most of the care.

The rider comes with access to a care coordination service.

Ohio National Financial Services, Cincinnati, is making its Protector Plus and Level-premium Paid-up Additions riders available with its limited-pay whole life insurance policies.

The company previously sold the riders only with the Prestige 100 II lifetime pay whole life policy.

The shift means that customers can buy the riders with the Prestige 10 Pay II, Prestige 20 Pay or Prestige Max III (Paid to 65) limited-pay policies.

Customers can use the new flexibility to increase early guaranteed cash value and dividend-earning potential, according to Ohio National.

The Protector Plus rider provides extra, inexpensive death benefits, through one-year term coverage, on top of the coverage provided by the underlying whole life policy. The expectation is that, over time, paid-up additions to the whole life death benefit, through the paid-up addition rider, will eliminate the need for the term life coverage, according to Ohio National.

Ohio National is writing the whole life coverage and the riders through The Ohio National Life Insurance Company.

Bestow Inc., Dallas, has introduced the Protect API tool, which is like a digital socket that lets other companies hook up their websites or software apps to a source of Bestow term life insurance.

A company can decide whether to limit it to provide life insurance cost estimates or let consumers use the tool to complete the process of buying term life insurance.

Consumers can use the Bestow API to buy up to $1 million in term life insurance through a quick, digital process, without going through telephone screenings or seeing a doctor or paramedical examiner, according to Bestow.

Tomorrow Ideas Inc., a legal and financial services app startup, is already using the API, to offer access to life insurance to consumers who are using the app to create wills, trusts and advanced health care directives, according to Bestow.

The firm says it’s also marketing the app to traditional insurance agencies and insurance brokers.

The Savings Bank Mutual Life Insurance Company of Massachusetts, Woburn, Massachusetts, is using technology from Insurance Experts Network Inc. (IXN) of Salt Lake City to help distributors submit electronic applications for SBLI term life insurance,  through both the web and mobile devices, according to SBLI.

The list of carriers that use IXN quotation technology also includes Protective Life Corp.

Omniscience Corp., Palo Alto, California, is offering life insurers an automated OmniExtract system that’s designed to extra life insurance underwriting information, such as health information, from scanned forms, faxed forms, photographs, and other digitizing-resistant formats.

The system can handle information in Chinese and Japanese as well as in languages that use the Roman alphabet, according to Omniscience.

Haven Life Insurance Agency, New York, does not have to publish an annual report, because it’s owed by MassMutual, rather than by ordinary investors.

The agency has been creating annual reports that talk about the achievements of the company’s customers.

“But 2020 was different,” Haven Life says on its website. “So for this year’s annual report we … didn’t really create an annual report at all. Instead, we made a cookbook.”

The recipes came from the policyholders, who also supplied commentary.

One policyholder sent in  recipe for Japanese milk bread.

“When the pandemic hit, my stress levels skyrocketed,” Becky wrote in a commentary on her recipe. “I used cooking and baking to help ease my mind. I found new recipes (like this Japanese Milk Bread) to try and revisited old recipes that I hadn’t made in a long time.”

One thing led to another, and friends and family soon helped Becky start a professional bakery, Becky reported.

— Read Haven Life Has a Life Policy That Pays a Death Benefit Stream, on ThinkAdvisor.

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