Whole Life

  • Persons seeking life insurance for the Whole of Life have several choices: they may:
  • buy a one-year renewable term contract and renew it annually, paying the full cost of insurance for each year
  • buy coverage for the insured’s life with a single premium payment, or 
  • buy coverage for the whole of life under some type of installment arrangement.  (p47)

1984 – Book – Life Insurance: Theory and Practice, by Robert I. Mehr

  • 1975 – AP – The Concept of the Level-Premium Whole Life Policy Reexamined, by Robert I. Mehr – 14p
  • 1981 – SOA – The Future of Permanent Life Insurance (rsa81v7n12), Society of Actuaries – 22p
  • 1983 – SOA – The Future of Whole Life Insurance–A Debates, Society of Actuaries – 24p
  • 1983 0510, 0511 and 0728 – GOV (House) – Tax Treatment of Life Insurance, Pete Stark (D-CA)  —  [BonkNote]
  • 1984 – Book – Life Insurance: Theory and Practice, by Robert I. Mehr
  • 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

  • A policy which endows at age 95 or later is called a “whole life” policy. (p27)

—  John E. Chapoton, Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, Department of The Treasury

1983 0510, 0511 and 0728 – GOV (House) – Tax Treatment of Life Insurance, Pete Stark (D-CA)  —  [BonkNote]

  • Whole life policies provide a guaranteed set of future cash values and death benefits for a specified premium.
  • In other words, the terms are fixed and guaranteed…..”  (p299)

2018 – Book – Statutory Valuation of Individual Life and Annuity Contracts | 5th Edition –Donna Claire, Lombardi and Summers

  • …not great promoters of cash value life insurance, the FTC and other Federal regulators for who Whole life is defined as level premium, continuous pay policies.

—  James W. Kemble

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