Dale Gustafson

  • Churning will be high as comparisons of recent performance and illustrations will “prove” the necessity for a switching. 

--  Dale R. Gustafson, Northwestern Mutual

...asks why the really hard questions about the product aren’t reflected in the articles we printed. His nominees for the hard questions are:

1981 11 - SOA - The Actuary, Society of Actuaries -  p6

  • I am impressed with how little reference has been made to the impact of inflation so far today.
  • Mr. Silletto remarked earlier that he expects the productivity of his company's agents to improve by about 5% each year.
  • At my own company, our economic analysis tells us to expect inflation rates of between 6% and 8% over the next five years.
  • If agent productivity is improving by only 5% per year, agents are either suffering a lower standard of living or commission rates will have to be increased.

--  Dale R. Gustafson, Northwestern Mutual

1977 - SOA - Marketing Strategy and Planning, Society of Actuaries - 14p

  • Let me review again for the Society the history of insurance regulation in the United States and the prominence in that history of one Elizur Wright.
    • He went to England in the mid-1850's to study actuarial science and to examine the life insurance business.
    • One of the things that made a very indelible impression on him both in England, and to a limited extent in the United States, was the public auction of life insurance policies, level premium whole life insurance policies without cash values.
    • When the individual owners of those policies reached an advanced age and they no longer had the means to pay the premiums they could sell those policies in the open market for a market cash value.
    • The problem was that the purchaser then had an adverse interest in the continuing longevity of that policyowner.
      • It was those humiliating and actually dangerous transactions that brought Mr. Wright to develop the nonforfeiture aspect of the Massachusetts Insurance Law and historically bring about required cash values.
    • Well, either we've forgotten that history or we believe that man has grown more mature and can now cope with that more effectively. It may help to think a little on those origins when designing a permanent insurance product without cash values

--  Dale Gustafson, Northwestern Mutual

1980 - SOA - Treatment of Existing Life Insurance Policyholders in Times of Rapidly Changing Economic Conditions, Society of Actuaries - 16p

  • Maybe there is a way to go back to those old policyholders and update the amount not by 15% percent as we did on the average update hut maybe double the amount or triple the amount to restore the economic value of those policies.
  • You have just indicated the mechanism of the enhancement as a possibility, I think we are going to have to seriously look at things like that as the decade goes on if this least likely of all possible economic worlds continues to hold.

--  Dale Gustafson, Northwestern Mutual

1980 - SOA - Treatment of Existing Life Insurance Policyholders in Times of Rapidly Changing Economic Conditions, Society of Actuaries - 16p