Life Annuity Specialist, a trade publication that covers our industry, recently interviewed Senior Vice President Achim Schwetlick about National Life’s growing book of universal life insurance business.
It resulted in a story that highlighted our place in the industry.
The article is available to subscribers here. And we’re also sharing it below from our corporate subscription.
Vermont Insurer Eyes Pacific Life in Race to Be Top Indexed Life Seller
By Cyril Tuohy
In what’s been a quiet year for sellers of indexed universal life insurance, the biggest news may be a possible changing of the guard.
Starting in 2017, Pacific Life has been the leading seller of the products, after grabbing the lead from Transamerica, according to Wink’s Sales & Market Report. This year, a much smaller competitor from Vermont, that has only one-fifth as many assets, has been surging.
By the end of the third quarter, Montpelier-based National Life Group was trailing Pacific Life by only $37 million in sales year to date. As the volume of Pacific Life’s two best-selling indexed life products fall, National Life’s are rising, according to Wink, a market research firm.
How National Life pulled this off owes partly to moving quickly to adapt when the pandemic struck, and partly to having the luck of targeting a market niche where it could operate more easily under social-distancing restrictions.
“It is conceivable that National Life could take Pacific Life’s top spot in indexed life for 2020,” said Sheryl Moore, CEO of Wink. She said much will depend on the results from this quarter, which typically is the largest of the year for the product segment.
Pacific Life, based in Newport Beach, Calif., declined to comment for this article.
National Life sells two indexed life contracts – FlexLife and PeakLife. FlexLife is designed to be sold into the middle market. PeakLife is designed to appeal to business owners.
Distribution Support
When the pandemic shut down much of the nation in March, it was easy for National Life to pivot and sell FlexLife through new means, said Achim Schwetlick, senior vice president for National Life’s business innovation group.
Policies for the middle market are less complicated than large ones sold to wealthier individuals. Sales don’t grind to a halt amid pandemic limits on social interactions because the contracts lend themselves to virtual and remote distribution, he said.
“Some carriers don’t allow remote selling,” Schwetlick said.
National Life took other steps too, to ensure the business wouldn’t drop off. It held dozens of webinars for agents and posted selling tips almost daily, compared with weekly before the pandemic.
The insurer also created a single landing page for its mix of career agents and independent advisors to go to, and make sure all marketing materials were available there, he said.
National Life put together webinars to help agents become virtual marketers, teach them to generate sales leads via social media and guide them on how to present themselves.
That made it easier for the company to recruit agents, and National Life expanded its number of agent relationships by 25% this year, he said. Four out of every five agents that the company does business with are independent. One in five is a career agent, Schwetlick said.
“Part of the reason the middle market benefited is that it was a significant job opportunity and that was more attractive to sellers,” Schwetlick said.
Also, within five weeks, National Life was able to execute electronic delivery and electronic signature of life and annuity policies, he said.
Product Tweaks
In March, National Life raised the face amount eligible for accelerated underwriting from $2 million for applicants under age 50 to $3 million for applicants under age 50 on both FlexLife and PeakLife. Those limits remain unchanged, Schwetlick said.
Advisor Josh Mellberg, president of J.D. Mellberg Financial in Tucson, Ariz., said National Group’s rise was due to “some of the most unique” benefits available with FlexLife.
They include six ways to credit gains for policies, a lifetime income benefit rider, and riders that allow the policyholder to draw on part of the death benefit to pay for chronic or critical illness, or for a critical injury.
Trent Davis, principal of an independent marketing organization in Des Moines, Iowa, said that after 30 years in the business, he doesn’t pay much attention to who’s selling the most.
“Transamerica was very good for a long time,” he said. “They’ve fallen out.”
He said that, when trying to make a life insurance sale, “You’ve got to look at the best product for that particular circumstance.”