I am clearly anal retentive.
This first time I read the book “Law and the life Insurance Contract” was as I began my studies for my CLU (Chartered Life Underwriter) designation in the late 1980s.
This college textbook holds over seven hundred pages of definitions, stipulations and other insights into the structure of a life insurance contract. I am amazed on how many agents who don’t bother reading the actual contracts of the policies they offer to the public, but instead are fixated on the printed-out life insurance illustration which itself clearly stipulates:
THIS IS AN ILLUSTRATION ONLY. AN ILLUSTRATION IS NOT INTENDED TO PREDICT ACTUAL PERFORMANCE. INTEREST RATES, DIVIDENDS, OR VALUES THAT ARE SET FORTH IN THE ILLUSTRATION ARE NOT GUARANTEED, EXCEPT THOSE ITEMS CLEARLY LABELED AS GUARANTEED. THE ACTUAL POLICY LANGUAGE SHALL SERVE AS ALL BINDING AGREEMENTS BETWEEN ALL PARTIES TO THE INSURANCE CONTRACT ASSOCIATED WITH THIS ILLUSTRATION.
If you want to know what you’re purchasing, use the illustration as a tool, but to completely understand how your policy works, you should ask your life insurance agent to go through it with you, page-by-page with a highlighter in your hands. It might be the first time the agent has actually taken the time to read the entire contract, themselves.
When you’re making a decision as important as life insurance, you need to work with someone who is clearly anal retentive.
