Annuities

Designs In Life has been marketing annuities for many years and has professional relationships with top annuity carriers.

Annuities can be confusing sometimes, but we have the experience and know-how to guide and direct you with independent information and helpful articles as well as carrier marketing materials, charts and illustrations.

We also provide resources for using annuities to enhance specific planning strategies where the use of an annuity can provide added value. The living benefits of an annuity can provide money for life insurance premiums to leverage wealth transfer, for example. Annuities may also be helpful for couples with special-needs children and in charitable-giving situations. There are now annuities with additional, tax-favored living benefits for such things as long-term care and critical illness expenses. We are well informed about these new annuity contracts and will be happy to discuss their features with you.

Disability

Employers and employees often forget that one of their most important assets is their income. They don’t often think about what would happen if they lost the ability to earn that income due to an extended illness or recovery from a serious accident. As financially devastating as that risk might be, it is an insurable risk and can be covered by disability income insurance, disability buy-out insurance, and/or disability overhead expense insurance at a cost that is often below 4% of adjusted gross income.

Disability Insurance (DI) at Designs In Life is sold either as an individual policy or as a multi-life policy. Discounts of up to 20% are available on both types of policies depending on the carrier and the number of policies sold by the carrier.

We provide a full range of solutions for the possible risk that your client will become temporarily or permanently disabled and unable to earn all or part of his or her income. Our carriers have been carefully chosen to allow us to offer affordable plans of insurance for both the ‘white-‘and ‘blue-collar’ market. And, we have access to carriers that will provide coverage for special situations, such as impaired risk, professional athletes, and extensive foreign travel.

As DI is a type of health insurance, we provide you with a pre-assessment form that helps avoid a declined application and allows us to choose the best carrier for your client’s particular situation. We also provide an illustration request form for you convenience in requesting a proposal.

We take every DI application very seriously and process it accordingly. We know how important such coverage can be to an individual or a family when an unexpected debilitating accident or illness happens to the ‘breadwinner’.

Long Term Care

One of the most challenging future risks that we all face is - to be blunt - taking too long to die. Long-term care insurance (LTCi) transfers the cost of that risk to an insurance company. The most common insurance policy for long-term care is referred to as “stand-alone” LTCi or “traditional” LTCi. Long-term care insurance can also be “linked” with another insurance contract with costs being paid from the values of that contract. Federal and state governments have now provided tax-favored status for receiving payment for LTC costs with both types of contracts.

We are well-acquainted with long-term care insurance strategies and provide a range of carriers, products, and informational materials to help you find the most cost-effective solution to mitigate this very possible future risk. Our core carriers are all dedicated to the LTCi marketplace and well-capitalized to pay claims when the time comes. Currently, we are appointed with John Hancock, MetLife, Prudential, Genworth, Mutual of Omaha, and Assurity Life companies.

Because coverage for long-term care is a health insurance issue, we provide you with a medical pre-assessment form so that you can quickly determine if your client will qualify for the coverage. Turn-around time for that determination is usually 24 hours or less. Performing this additional step up front reduces the chance of a decline from the carrier and helps us determine which of our LTC insurance companies would best be suited for underwriting your client.

We provide side-by-side comparison illustrations as well as complete carrier-specific proposals for your discussion with clients. LTCi is not an ‘off-the-shelf’ type of insurance contract – one size does not fit all. So, we’ll shop your client’s health and financial profile to help you find the best contract with the best carrier at an affordable price.