Tour
Introduction |
Members |
News |
The Basics |
Carrier List |
Resources |
Sales Report
Members
Members |
What's New |
Search |
Specs |
Rates |
Sales
Members of LifeSpecs that have a paid subscription to the site can Sign-in on two
different areas of the website. There is a Members Sign-in area on the
right navigation of the Home page, and there is also a Sign-in link located
in the top right-hand corner of each page.
Upon signing-in to the site, you will be brought to the Members Home page.
This page is the gateway that gives you access to all of the paid services that
LifeSpecs provides. You can access all of the paid services on this page, as well
as through the right navigation of members pages. Let’s talk about those valuable
services that you are gaining access to.
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What's New in Indexed Annuities
What’s New in Indexed Life (a.k.a. What’s New) keeps
you up-to-date on what products have been recently launched or removed from the
market. This page is organized in alphabetical order, with new product launches
listed on the left, and product discontinuations on the right. What’s New
in Indexed Life defaults to the last three months of products. We archive
the page, however, and if you were to use the drop-down box at the top left-hand
side of the page, you can access What’s New for previous quarters.
This feature of the website comes in particularly handy for trend reports, or for
determining strategy when analyzing a competitor insurance carrier.
Each link on the What’s New in Indexed Life page will link you to
a product profile spec page. This specification is the same basic template that
will be displayed for the 60+ product profiles that are housed on the LifeSpecs.com
website any given day. These profiles can be accessed from the What’s New
page, as well as from the Specs page which list each carrier’s product
portfolio.
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Search
To utilize our dynamic search engine, click on the Members menu on the
top navigation, and click Use Search or click on the Search link
on the right navigation. This feature gives you the capability of searching the
entire Indexed Universal Life market for specific products, or products with a given
criteria. This portion of LifeSpecs is particularly useful for agents that want
to ensure they are going to find the right product for their client. It also features
handy filters that no other site offers, allowing you to search for products that:
The Search Results page gives you a glimpse of how many products meet your
search criteria. You can select up to four products in the View column,
to compare in a side-by-side product comparison via PDF. This is especially helpful
in competitive situations, or when comparing products for analysis of a client’s
needs.
All product specifications are noted with the date that the information was last
updated. This is essential when saving specs or side-by-sides on your computer,
or when emailing them to a fellow agent, IMO, or B/D.
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Specs
Product specifications for individual insurance carriers can be accessed by clicking
Members on the top navigation, and then Use Specs, or by clicking
the Specs link on the right-hand navigation. This will take you to a page
that lists the names of all of the carriers in the Indexed Life market. Carriers
that have left the market are indicated with an asterisk (*) after their name. The
page is organized in alphabetical order from left to right. At this point, you select
the name of the carrier that you are interested in seeing product specifications
for. This will link you to a page of product names.
Some companies will have a section on the right-hand side of the Specs
page, which lists products which are “No Longer Actively Marketed.”
These product specs will be in gray. These are specs that are:
- Not available for sale anywhere
- Soon to be taken off of the market
- Being replaced by new product due to state approvals, etc.
This is a feature that makes our website unique, as there is no other website that
archives Indexed Life products that are no longer available for sale. This can be
an important resource for those needing to compare carrier products that replace
older products in the lineup, or for agents that are attempting to assist orphaned
policyholders. (Note: it is important to be aware of the fact LifeSpecs.com does
not have an archived spec for every Indexed Life product ever sold. However, all
Indexed Life products that have been removed from the market since the launch of
LifeSpecs.com in July of 2008 have been archived.)
Once on a carrier’s Specs page, you select the name of the product
that you are interested in reviewing, and you will be linked to the product profile.
If you wish to compare multiple products in a carrier’s portfolio at once,
the Search portion of the site is most effective.
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Rates
If you are interested in benchmarking rates for a product against other comparable
rates, you can go to the Rates portion of the site. This can be accessed
by going to Members and clicking on Use Rates, or by clicking
the Rates link on the right navigation. You will receive a choice of three
different product types:
- Bonus
- Cap Rate
- Company
- Fixed Rates
- Illustrated Rates
- Participation Rate
- Product
- Spread Rate
- Surrender Charge Duration
The Rates pages are organized the way a Home Office rate-setting committee
would want it, to effectively compare Indexed Life rates for setting their rates,
caps, spreads, etc. against competitors. Several factors are taken into consideration:
- FIRST, grids are broken down by crediting method; you will only find monthly point-to-points
by other monthly point-to points, and daily averaging products with other daily
averagings. (Actuaries know that a product with monthly averaging can afford a higher
cap than that of an annual point-to-point for example, so we need to compare apples
to apples.)
- SECOND, grids are broken down by how frequently interest is credited; you will only
find annual resets next to other annual resets. (How many times have you had someone
ask you why Product A has a cap of 7%, and Product B has a cap of 15%? Only to answer
them that they are comparing an annual point-to-point against a two-year point-to-point.
We’re taking the guess work out of your hands: we’re the experts, let
us do the work!)
So, a logical progression through the rates page would show the following crediting
methods:
- Monthly Point-to-Point
- Annual Point-to-Point
- Inverse Annual Point-to-Point
- Two-Year Point-to-Point
- Term Ended Point
- Monthly Averaging
- Daily Averaging
- Fixed
- Fixed with Multi-Year Guarantee
A couple of things about the Rates reports: first, they have an incredible
amount of data (one entry for every single crediting method on every product available
today, with few exceptions). Imagine a report that offers information for each product
on the market (some 50+ today), and each of the crediting methods available on each
product (some products have as many as 12 different crediting methods)! That means
that you could potentially scroll down the Rates report for quite a while.
We’ve increased functionality of the page by giving you a “jump menu”
to quicken your journey to your desired crediting method grid. This menu lists the
more common crediting methods available on the market today. Corresponding Jump
to Top links are also provided at the bottom of each of the grids.
We’ve also added a new feature to Rates, by allowing you to filter
your results on the report and minimize the entries that are on the page. The drop-down
on the upper-right corner of the page will allow you to select a single crediting
method type to be displayed on the page.
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Sales
Quarterly, year-to-date, annual, and cumulative Indexed Life sales data can be found
by going to Members, and clicking on Use Sales, or by
clicking on the Sales Information link on the right navigation. This is
a convenient benefit for our members that do not want to have to sort through years
of articles or reports.
Note: The information displayed in this tour may be outdated. To view the most
up-to-date information please join LifeSpecs to view the member pages.