BTID - Buy Term and Invest the Difference

--  Stanley B. Tulin

1981 - SOA - The Future of Permanent Life Insurance (rsa81v7n12), Society of Actuaries - 22p

  • We have long been worried over the buy-term-and-invest-the-difference concept.
  • Whole Life is a buy-term-and-invest-the-difference contract also, but with the relation between insurance and premium actuarially fixed and, furthermore with the investment limited to the general account of the insurance company.
  • The desired objective seems to me to be to lure insurance buyers back to our version of buy-term-and-invest-the-difference.
    • We will only do this with imaginative approaches to agent compensation and life insurance product design.

--  J. Ross Hanson

1976 - SOA - Agent's Compensation: Individual and Group Aspects, Society of Actuaries - 23p 

  • In the cases where the company offered all the usual forms of insurance with emphasis on permanent plans, the salesman would usually first offer the prospect the whole life policy;
    • often this was like pulling teeth, because fund salesmen were trained for years on the concept of "Buy term and invest the difference."
  • Usually, after the sale of the fund is made, the salesman offers his prospect, as a service, an additional product at very little extra cost.
    • The point is made that we know what the family will receive if both parents survive, but, in the event that the breadwinner does not survive, his spouse will need the planned-savings goal more than ever.
  • So the company offers this protection as a service, with whole life offered first.
    • If the prospect finds this unattractive, something on the order of joint life term may be suggested as an alternative.
    • If that does not fit into his budget, he is offered the "stripped down" version, the VW, so to speak; this plan is the well-known decreasing term, contract-completion insurance.

--  Robert C. Tookey

1967 -  SOA - New Company Problems, Society of Actuaries - 38p