By Daxton Fryer, Senior Life Settlement Analyst Whether you call it a life settlement, a lifetime settlement or a senior settlement, Life Settlements have become a very popular option for today’s financial planners and trusted advisors and their clients who may want to cash out their life insurance policies. Life Settlements have also become a powerful option for corporations, trusts and individuals who have poorly performing or thinly funded senior client policies. This specialty is fast becoming a mainstream financial planning tool for insurance agents, CPA’s, tax attorneys, estate planners, elder law attorneys and trust companies. As a financial professional,…
Top Five Life Insurance Myths
By Steven J. Oshins, J.D., AEP (Distinguished) Understanding life insurance is important for everybody in the estate planning industry. Whether you are a financial advisor, an attorney, an accountant or a banker, you have plenty of opportunities to help your clients make good life insurance decisions. With any complex topic, there are always myths that exist that cause people to make bad purchase decisions. The life insurance industry is no different than other industries in that numerous myths have been repeated over and over through the years. MYTH #1- Buying term insurance and investing the difference is better than buying…
Naming IRA Beneficiaries
By Robert S. Keebler, CPA, MST, AEP (Distinguished), CGMA Earlier this year, the IRS released PLR 201417027 in which it refused to extend the deadline to begin required minimum distributions (RMDs), for taxpayers who were not even aware that they were beneficiaries of a decedent’s retirement plan. Because of their seemingly innocent mistake, the missed RMDs might be sliced in half by the 50% excise tax for missed distributions under IRC § 4947(a) and the beneficiaries might be exposed to negligence and understatement penalties under IRC § 6662. This ruling is a reminder of the importance of proper naming of…
I Had a Successful Practice, Now What?
By Joseph J. Strazzeri, Esq. At industry conferences you hear it all the time. The first day is all about friends connecting and sharing their successes since they last saw each other. Over dinner and wine, or maybe the next day, you start to hear the challenges they are facing such as fewer clients, lower compensation, more hours, and administrative team breakdowns. Practitioners that have been in the business more than half-a-dozen years have seen these ups and downs of market driven forces, and they no longer try to address the symptoms, but rather the underlying cause. Understanding that the…