Northwestern Mutual

[G]

Please elaborate. That is a website. What does it have to do with building trust? It gives prices for policies, which is, exactly, what I have been advocating one research when shopping for term.

But it does not give prices for all companies. It will only give prices for those that sell through independent agents, unless they have changed the marketing strategy.

One way to shop would be to go to a site like that, assume it covers the universe of options, find an agent and buy.

A better way would be to go to a site like that, find good potential policies AND ALSO shop the captives. Compare and pick the best policy available from either source.

If that is not better than the independent-only approach, please explain why.
If it has something to do with discussing my hobbies with an insurance agent, please explain what that has to do with finding the best term policy.

Ok. One last time. The kids have no idea what they need and don't need. Shop the "captives?" Are you serious? I'd bet you $100 that not one of my residents even knows what that term means aside from those with a life before medicine. An "expert" tells them they need XYZ. The kid may have been told by an off-service attending in a one hour lecture last year that whole life is melanotic stool. But the expert, who has "taken care of" several other folks in the program, tells him it is variable universal life and has a bunch of reasons why it is necessary. Hobbies, friendship, etc have nothing to do with any of that except as a part of developing rapport in the setting of salesmanship.

I really don't know why you are arguing about this (or why I'm taking the time to argue with you...) unless you are actually an insurance agent, have never seen it play out, or just don't remember what it is like to be innocent/gullible/uneducated. Most of us did not spring from Zeus's head ready for battle.

[afan]

I suppose we have to agree to disagree. To me, asking a life insurance salesperson what kind of life insurance to buy is crazy. Shopping for a product before you know what you want to buy is crazy.
Figure you what you want, THEN shop. Ask insurance salespeople for the prices of the products you want.
Don't ask them for advice.
Same for anything else you might buy through a salesperson. If you ask them for advice, they will advise you to buy the most profitable thing they have, whether it is a car, a dishwasher or an insurance policy. So don't ask.
There was a time when I did not know what I needed for life insurance. I did not go ask a salesperson for advice. I did my own due diligence, realized I wanted term insurance from a strong company at a good price. I used at least one independent agent AND I shopped the captives. I am still not clear what it wrong with that procedure other than "some people don't do that."

If one is shopping for insurance, as I advise, then it makes sense to shop a variety of companies and not restrict oneself to those that sell through independent agents. If an independent agent or a captive offers something you don't want, don't buy it.

[Tim]

“If one is shopping for insurance, as I advise, then it makes sense to shop a variety of companies and not restrict oneself to those that sell through independent agents. If an independent agent or a captive offers something you don't want, don't buy it.”
Would you advise having an attorney review the contract? I doubt anyone reads and understands the legalese. Seems the smart thing to do. Not one of the quotes contains the actual contract. From that perspective, price doesn’t matter. No one has the policy in hand before payment.
Trust and disclosure is important. Businesses develop reputations. Many businesses turn away revenue because the service or product is not suitable.

[afan]

“From that perspective, price doesn’t matter. No one has the policy in hand before payment.
Trust and disclosure is important.

OK. We definitely disagree. As an almost commodity, price is one of the very few things that does matter. "Trust" who? One buys a policy from an insurance company, not an agent. To the extent that trust, as opposed to state insurance regulators, enter into it, the trust would be of the insurer, not the agent.

Business relationship does not matter at all. Once you buy it, you have one policy from one company. If the company goes under, is the agent with whom you have a relationship going to pay the death benefit?

Other strong companies that sell through captive employees: New York Life, TIAA, USAA, State Farm. When I was shopping I got prices from all of them. USAA and TIAA were very competitive. For my needs at the time NYL and SF were not. I did not rule them all out because one had to go directly to them rather than through an independent agent. I also got quotes from companies that sell through independent agents. As it turned out, all the best offerings were from the captives. So that is where I bought.

Why is this wrong? Is it wrong because some people mistakenly put their trust in the wrong agent? Perhaps a good reason to remove trust from the equation, rather than seek out a different agent to "trust".

[Tim]

Certainly we disagree. No doubt about that.
When an agent follows company policy in making the sale, no negligence. The company then relies on the written policy. Face amount and premium were your criteria. Incomplete analysis of the options. The policies aren’t the same.
That is why consumers get screwed. No obligation to disclose the key shortcomings of one versus the other. I prefer to deal with a business that values providing a reasonably honest opinion or recommendation. No interest in reading 10 contracts. I doubt you read all 10 contracts. For term life, probably works. Any other product it is a mistake. Question: do you request a sample policy with every quote? I ask an independent agent to do that work and only look at three. That is the “work” where commission is earned. Additionally I ask for the advantage/disadvantage of one over the other. Term is the easiest, everything else is bells and whistles, included , exclusions or a rider needed. Risk/management in the insurance business is complicated. It’s not just face value and price comparison. I don’t see other companies using captive agents as sharks preying on residency classes. The only evidence I have is Edward Jones and NWM soliciting my daughter. Didn’t even look at it for her. I suppose they had some great deals. Don’t care for the business model used.
Just for your info, two in my family have profitably ran insurance businesses. One captive in a specialty product and the other in commercial/individual. Agents/brokers can get screwed as well as policy holders.
When someone says “This is a good policy”, I don’t want to miss that it’s good for me, not for you.
Term, auto, and to a lesser extent homeowners are doable. I just don’t like asking for a definition of “good”. No offense intended. Simply most residents don’t know what they don’t know.

[afan]

Simply most residents don’t know what they don’t know.

Right. So the solution is education, just as it is for learning to practice medicine.
One of the things residents need to learn is to look up the answers to their questions, rather than always just ask an attending and assume they have no responsibility for their own education. It is nice that they have the attendings to learn from, but the attendings don't stand to profit by misleading the trainees. Buying insurance is completely different.

For TERM insurance, I don't know what other policy provisions there could be that would distinguish one company from another. I have not seen any cited here.
Very few people need anything other than term, so few people need concern themselves with the provisions of a policy they are not going to buy.

Face amount and premium were your criteria. Incomplete analysis of the options. The policies aren’t the same.

Face amount, premium, term, financial strength of the company and data on customer satisfaction. If the term policies are different, how are they different?
If there were meaningful differences, I would not rely on an insurance salesperson to tell me about them.

It may sound strange, but yes, I read my policies before I buy them. How else could I know what they say? Asking a salesperson would not tell me what the policies say. It would tell me what the salesperson said that say, which is not useful information.

If there exists a life insurance company that sells both whole and term but does not pay any more in commissions for selling $X of whole life than $X of term, then that company is not likely to sell much whole life. This is not just a NWML thing. All whole life has big commissions.

Question: do you request a sample policy with every quote? I ask an independent agent to do that work and only look at three.

Or get quotes from three captives. Ignoring the captives means ignoring a very large part of the insurance market. Many of the largest companies in the business. As I indicated, you may find that many of them offer great rates.

What do you care what their agents say about other policies? They are there to quote you rates, anything else they say is meaningless sales blather. It is easy to ignore when you are one faceless person on the phone talking to another faceless person. Or doing it all online. Think of them as the anonymous person who entered the prices on Amazon. You are never going to meet them, let alone ask them for advice. As long as the prices are correct, which you will see when you get the illustration, they have done their job.

If you don't want to be bothered shopping more than provider then you take your chances of what you miss by not looking elsewhere.

[Tim]

Disability Insurance? NWM is ranked #1. Expert Advisor. Sounds like NWM doesn’t have salesmen.
https://www.northwesternmutual.com/g...SAAEgLoffD_BwE

[afan]

When I was shopping for disability I looked at NWML. It was not competitive for me.

I think I did buy a policy through an independent agent. Not because I "liked" or "trusted" the agent, but because they came up with the best combination of features and price. This was a long time ago and I must have talked with the agent over the phone, so at the time I knew whether it was a man or woman, not that I cared. Never met them. I never bought anything else from them.

[CatAlum]

Glad I found WCI. In my previous post I wrote about my wife having life insurance and disability through NWM. I've spent the last week shopping life insurance and disability and fortunately I picked one of the brokers off WCI. He directed me to get NWM Enforced Ledger on life insurance. I now see how NWM Term 80 works. They get you looped in with their crazy low rates at the start, only to nail you later, when you are older and thus harder to insure. We are right at the point where the premiums are about to accelerate. Thank you WCI forum and website. There shouldn't be a penalty for canceling just straight term, right?

[Andrew Musbach]

Glad I found WCI. In my previous post I wrote about my wife having life insurance and disability through NWM. I've spent the last week shopping life insurance and disability and fortunately I picked one of the brokers off WCI. He directed me to get NWM Enforced Ledger on life insurance. I now see how NWM Term 80 works. They get you looped in with their crazy low rates at the start, only to nail you later, when you are older and thus harder to insure. We are right at the point where the premiums are about to accelerate. Thank you WCI forum and website. There shouldn't be a penalty for canceling just straight term, right?

Correct. With term life, you just stop paying premiums and then your coverage will lapse. I think this goes without saying, but since it sounds like you still have an insurance need, make sure you have the new term life insurance in place before letting the NWM policy lapse.

[CatAlum]

Correct. With term life, you just stop paying premiums and then your coverage will lapse. I think this goes without saying, but since it sounds like you still have an insurance need, make sure you have the new term life insurance in place before letting the NWM policy lapse.

Thanks for the response and information. Yes and we are starting the underwriting policy now because I was told it could take 4-6 weeks before new insurance is in place.