Universal Life – Cost of Insurance

  • Lawsuits
  • select and ultimate
  • One very ominous trend is a movement toward select and ultimate mortality charges on Universal Life, and this is one that hopefully will stop.
    • We hope that the companies will not follow the same suicidal tendencies with Universal Life that they’ve followed with annual renewable term down the select and ultimate path.
    • Universal Life has been promoted by a number of people as an alternative to the self-destructive practices that the industry has followed on annual renewable term, so hopefully we will not make the same mistake again.

—   Randall P. Mire

1983 – SOA – Universal Life (rsa83v9n32), Society of Actuaries – 22p

  • Another possibility that may have merit is to charge select and ultimate premiums for the pure insurance component of a universal life plan.
  • However, we agree with Mr. Smith and dozens of other actuaries with whom we have discussed S/U ART that those companies selling products (be they term or “whole life”) with select premiums may be asking for trouble.
  • Time will tell whether trouble will respond, but we expect it will.

—  Authors’ Review of Discussion – Jeffery Dukes and Andrew M. Mac Donald

1980 – SOA – Pricing a Select and Ultimate Annual Renewable Term Product, Society of Actuaries – 38p