Life insurance provides peace of mind and protects your clients and their families with financial stability and security when it matters the most. Fortify Insurance Group represents all major Life insurance companies and provides support for a full range of life insurance products, including:

  • Whole Life
  • Term Life
  • Guaranteed Universal Life (GUL)
  • Indexed Universal Life (IUL)
  • Hybrid Policies

We value our clients and work closely with them to provide the experience, services, and protection they deserve. With decades of experience in the life insurance industry, we can recommend the right products to give your clients the protection their families and businesses need.

Whole Life

This is one of the oldest forms of permanent life insurance and is generally offered by mutual companies.  Whole Life Insurance provides guaranteed insurance protection along with a guaranteed cash value accumulation. 

The cash value grows tax-deferred but at a guaranteed rate until the contract is surrendered. Whole Life cash accumulation is based on carrier performance rather than an index. The advantage of the cash value in a whole life contract is that it is guaranteed so you know exactly how much value is available in the policy; it will never be less than what is illustrated in the policy.

Whole Life has some great applications:

  • “Gift of a Lifetime” for juvenile children or grandchildren
  • “Living Benefit” source of cash as used for supplementing retirement income or covering unexpected expenses.  

A recent development in the market has been the addition of Long Term Care and Chronic Illness riders that can be added to these policies. This provides a living benefit to cover the high cost of long-term or chronic care without depleting the death benefit and cash value of the policy. 

Term Life

A personal Term Life Insurance policy can provide a death benefit to your client’s family or business if the client dies while the coverage is in force. This type of policy is the most economical way to secure a high death benefit, but it generally expires or becomes prohibitively expensive at the end of the “Term.” Generally, the “Term of insurance” is either 30, 20, 15, 10, 5 or 1 year. 

Term Life Insurance offers various riders which allow us to customize coverage to meet your individual requirements:

  • Return of premium – all or a portion of premiums paid during a policy period can be returned if claims are not filed, or if the amount of claims filed is smaller than the amount of premiums paid.
  • Waiver of premium – waives premium payments in the event the insured person becomes critically ill, seriously injured, or disabled.
  • Child term – helps parents extend insurance coverage of their children to other coverages listed in their policy. Purchasing a child rider is typically cheaper and most companies offer insurance for children as a rider to their parent’s policy.
  • Chronic/terminal illness – provides the insured person with additional financial support if he or she is diagnosed with a chronic/terminal illness.
  • Extended conversion privileges – the option to trade in the term policy for permanent coverage without health evaluation, or evidence of insurability. Conversion becomes crucially important if the insured person develops a health condition during the term period.

Typically, these policies are paid for with after-tax dollars; therefore, benefits are tax-free. Note that most Term Life contracts can be converted to a “permanent” life insurance contract.

Guaranteed Universal Life (GUL)

This type of “permanent” life insurance is also commonly referred to as “Permanent Term.”  Generally, these policies are designed with “lapse-protected” death benefits lasting for the life of the insured – typically to age 120. 

Unlike other types of permanent life insurance contracts, a GUL offers little to no cash value accumulation and little flexibility other than solving the death benefit guarantee to a specific age.  Because the policy includes lapse protection of the death benefit, the policy rates are guaranteed; the only way for the policy to be adjusted after issue is failure to pay premiums on time. 

Indexed Universal Life (IUL)

This type of permanent life insurance policy has become very popular over the last 10 years.  IUL policies not only allow the insured to secure a guaranteed death benefit but also to accumulate cash value that can be used as additional income at retirement or fund unexpected future expenses.

The cash value accumulation in an IUL is based on the allocation of premiums to and the performance of “Indexes” that are selected by the policyholder at inception (including a carrier’s “fixed account”). Common Indexes include S&P 500, Russell 2000, Barclays, Hang Seng, EURO STOXX or similar market performance measures. IULs include a “floor” which is typically 0, 1 or 2 percent to prevent any loss of cash value. They also include a generous “cap” or “uncapped” strategy to maximize cash accumulation.

Ultimately, what this means is your client’s premium dollars are protected from any market downside while allowing for tax-deferred cash value accumulation inside of the life insurance policy.  The insured person gets easy access to cash if needed for chronic illness, unexpected expenses, or to use as an alternate source of income during a bear market. IULs are also very flexible and have no limitations on future annual contributions into the policy.  IULs can be used for individual estate planning as well as business continuity planning. 

Hybrid Policies

Recently, the Life Insurance industry introduced contracts that use a whole life or universal life policy as a base and then add benefits specific to Long-Term Care or Critical/Chronic Illness risks.  In this day and age where people are more likely to become disabled from diseases that used to result in death, the need for a long-term care solution has increased significantly. The cost of long-term care has become a burden for many retirees as well as the children who support them.  

By adjusting the benefit allocation in these policies from death/cash value to LTC, we can now offer risk mitigation solutions to cover a long-term care situation that could destroy retirement savings in an instant.  The current policies available offer significant benefits:

  • Death benefit if an insured dies before needing long term care 
  • Full return of premium 
  • A Long Term Care benefit that eliminates the need to use retirement assets to cover expenses associated with this type of care.

We take pride in crafting hybrid policies that meet the individual needs of the insured. Life insurance is not “one-size-fits-all.”