- Big Boyz Comedy Kings is coming to Yamaha Resort and Casino Saturday, December 9th with D.L. Hughlin. - That sweater so tight, look like a snap between the legs. - Cedric the Entertainer. - Once we stop running, I'll find out what it was we was running about. - And Paul Rodriguez.

- What is it about old Mexican men? They could be missing a leg, they still want to get into a fight. - Hosted by my man Eric Blake in a special performance by Mario. Big Boyz Comedy Kings, December 9th at Yamaha Resort and Casino. Tickets can be purchased at AXS.com.

This is a 21 and over event. - Would you like to get the back office scoop from an experienced veteran of the life insurance industry to understand how companies actually approach the underwriting of individual policies? Today I'm going to share with you an interview with a friend of mine, a man named Todd Simpson, who is a 30-plus year veteran of the life insurance industry and specializes in high risk, or what we call special risk, underwriting for life insurance.

I think you'll enjoy this behind the scenes view of the industry. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets. This is episode 204 of the show. I'm going to be with a friend of mine, Todd Simpson. Todd is one of the partners in a company called the Stam Agency.

He is an insurance broker. Doesn't work directly with individual clients, but rather works as a broker working with life insurance agents. Took some microphones into his office, pinned him down, and asked him all the hard questions that I think you would want to ask him if you had the opportunity.

I've mentioned Todd a couple of times on the show, not by name, but in referencing a friend of mine who was a high risk or a special risk broker. And this was somebody that I worked with when I was an active life insurance agent to help me place a lot of my cases.

Todd's a great guy, has a long history in the life insurance business, and I think you'll enjoy some of the behind the scenes access. Doing my best to change the tenor and the tone of financial media. So oftentimes, the people that are referenced on financial media, the people that want to be out there, and the people that are out there with a message, with something to sell.

And I'm trying to go to the people that aren't out there asking for things and try to talk about how things really happen, to try to expose the reality of things to you. And that was what happened. I called up Todd, and I said, hey, Todd, I want to come and talk to you and bring you on the show.

He wasn't necessarily looking for it. He didn't really want to do it, but he agreed to do it. And that was how he wound up on the show. But I think you'll find this insightful. I'm trying to ask him the toughest questions that I can to try to create more of communication.

Especially if you ever owned life insurance or ever want to own life insurance, you'll find this to be useful. And if you know anybody who's ever been declined for life insurance or who's been rated for life insurance, or if you find yourself in that situation, this is a useful resource for you.

Todd is an expert. He's a CLU and a CHFC. That means he's a chartered life underwriter and a chartered financial consultant. He's been in the business for many, many years. And he is an expert when it comes especially to the topic of insurance underwriting. He is-- in the old days, they would call insurance agents field underwriters.

Now unfortunately, I think some of that professionalism has been lost in the life insurance business. But in many ways, a life insurance agent is, in fact, an underwriter that's in the field. They're the first line of actually figuring out what's an appropriate solution for this specific client, for this specific need.

Todd is kind of the next level. He's a broker. So his responsibility is to figure out where do I place this case. And he's been, in my years as a financial-- as an insurance agent, he was a very useful resource to me. Knowing what company to place a case with and knowing how to structure a case can make a major, major difference.

And I think you'll hear that in this interview with Todd. There is a level of professional expertise that goes a long way in the life insurance business. That's it for me. Here we go. So Todd, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate your being with me today.

I appreciate you having me. Thank you. I bragged about you on the show before. I've talked about my special risk broker who was able to help me place all these high risk cases. And now we get you here live and in person to school us on what to do with some special risk life insurance cases.

But I'd like to start with just hearing a little bit about your background in the life insurance business. How did you wind up in the life insurance business? Well, I really had no direction in what I wanted to be doing back in 1983. And I was at a social event and introduced to the then owner of the agency that I'm still currently with.

And he and I had some nice conversation. And he asked me what I thought I was going to be doing. How old were you at the time? I was 19. And he and I had some nice conversation. And then over the next few months, we continued to have some conversations.

And he offered me a job. He said, why don't you come into the office and see what you think, try it out. And he gave me a basic breakdown of what they did, which I had no understanding of whatsoever. And the rest is history. So no experience, just fresh off the street.

And you built your business cold calling on people or working with agents? Or what was the initial-- what did your business look like in the beginning? I wish it was that pretty. It actually ended up being coming into the office and learning a little bit about the business, very basic things.

They threw books at me to read, anything they could get their hands on. And his offer to me was, you basically have to work through every job in the office before we can really teach you anything substantial. So I had that moment where I was like, oh, man, am I getting duped?

Or is this really going to be something for a career? And that was his guidance to me, was if you want a career, you've got to learn everything that we do. So I literally started answering phones for the agency to start with and worked my way through every job.

And back in those days, we had 20 employees. So there were a lot of jobs to work through, a lot of different things we were able to do that have changed. And the interesting thing is, some of the things we were doing back then, you wouldn't think of doing now.

Like what? We financed premiums. OK. Which was totally legal at the time, everyone. A little different now. Totally legal. But we would actually, because the companies didn't annualize commissions, we would pay the annual premiums on the policies. And the clients would sign a promissory note with us. And we would actually go about collecting premiums.

So would 1983 still have been the days of rate books and going through the tables and manually calculating things prior to illustrations and all of that? Exactly. You say rate card to someone now, and they're like, what are you talking about? And that was really our only basis of quoting.

Probably about six months after I started with the agency in 1984-- 1984 was my actual start date with the agency. And we got our first IBM PC with the floppy disks. And I think I was the first one in the office to actually run an illustration on the new IBM personal computer.

So it was an interesting time. But it was right at the time that Universal Life actually came on the scene. At the time, we were quoting term and whole life. And those were the only two products that were even available at that time. The managing director who recruited me into the business would tell me stories of sitting there and filling in custom kind of graphs with colored pencils and illustrations and kind of printing them up.

And you had your standard 100,000 of 90 life and 100,000 of ordinary life and 100,000 of term. And that was what you had to work with. Exactly. So here's the question. Fast forward to today, and you produce all the time customized illustrations with details. Do you think the business has-- are clients better served by the way it is now, or were they better served back then?

That's an interesting question. Because I think we did a lot of things really well back then. And I think there was a little more client-agent-broker interaction. Because people weren't looking for everything today. They knew it was going to take time. So you had more conversations with your clients. You had probably a little more personal contact.

Now, everybody's looking for everything quick. And sometimes it makes me wonder, not being out in the field, how much interaction the agents are actually having with their clients. Is it a quick sale where the client's like, hey, listen, I'm giving you half an hour. You better get in here and give me everything and explain it and get it to me right now?

Or is there a buildup to that? Is there a lot of interaction? So I think it's different the way people do it now. But I think the ease of getting information is better now, obviously. Without the internet, back then you had to call God knows how many people at home office to get an answer.

Or I remember during my studies for CLU, you had to find a mentor. And you were hoping that they knew the answer to the question because you couldn't just Google it. And you'd be like, all right, I need to know what this term means or that term means. And so it's interesting now.

So my audience generally in today's world, many people have very strong feelings on life insurance. What you should do, what you shouldn't do, what's the right type of policies. People have a lot of strong feelings, especially in the personal finance space, which is where I spend my time. Is that different in 2015 than it was in 1985?

Or were people very opinionated, just the general public back then as well? The interesting thing to me back then was I can remember whole life was sold because term was almost just as expensive. Really? Yeah, there were no level-- you had basically YRT, which is a one-year term. The earlier renewable term, YRT.

And 10-year term might have been the two options you had. And the YRT would literally become just as expensive as a whole life in about three years. So it was easier to sell whole life from the get-go and just tell folks, hey, this is what you need. You should have this cash value build up.

And as the different level terms came up, that changed a little bit and skewed it a little bit. And then universal life, of course, when that came, people were illustrating 13%, 14%, 15% returns when it first came out. And that changed the scope because you could get a term-like premium with a return on your money, which really kind of blew up.

And it was a good thing for a little while. Obviously, the rates didn't hold up. And you won't see any of those policies around anymore, I'm sure. Was the term-- so describe the term "life debacle" as far as the idea of vanishing premiums, the way they were illustrated. Describe what happened from your perspective as a broker and agent.

As far as term insurance goes? No, universal life insurance. Oh, the universal life. It was just crazy to think that you could get that kind of return. But no one saw it at the time. Insurance companies had come from a place of safety. Again, they were showing term. You had these premiums right in front of you that were term.

And then you had these premiums for whole life. And they were pretty much guaranteed. They said, as long as you pay these premiums. And then universal life came in and said, hey, guess what? You can become flexible with your premium. We can save you money by interest rate. And that was something that people had never seen before.

And you could get a term-like premium and actually have a return on it. People jumped all over it, especially at 13% or 14%. You were looking at some seriously decreasing premiums. And with that, term insurance then got cheaper. And then the different level periods of term came in. Why did term insurance get cheaper?

To be able to compete effectively? Or what was the market press on it? Well, at the time, universal life, when it came out, could actually have been cheaper than 10, 15, or 20-year term with a return on it. So all of a sudden, the company started thinking, well, we're obviously not going to sell any term if we're doing this.

And that's when the term started-- the term wars, in a sense, that they talk about now that are going on, and they are currently going on, started really way back then when universal life hit. Because the premiums, they had to find a way to make those products more affordable.

So that would have been late '80s, early '90s? Yes. Since then, in your guess, how much have rates decreased on term insurance, for example? It would be hard for me to say, but I would say they're probably 75% cheaper than they were back in the day. And do you think that's primarily the market forces, the competition?

How much of that is associated with the changes in mortality tables? What do you think? I think it's got some to do with mortality tables, but mostly just pricing. Companies came down to, we've got to do this in order to sell any of this. It's interesting to me, because back in the '80s, if you got a million dollar death benefit, that was a big deal.

You were a big shot. Yeah, you were. That was a great case. Companies would actually fly down and bring you the policy. And that's on a term case. That could be a 10-year term case. So a million dollar policy on a 50-year-old, and they're like, oh my gosh, we're going to come down and we're going to actually fly down and bring you the policy.

We'll go with you to go deliver that policy. Now you get a million dollar policy on a 50-year-old and it barely keeps the lights on. It's just not that profitable anymore. So how did you wind up in your current specialty of special risk broker? The agency was created because the founder saw a need that wasn't being looked at by people's companies.

And I can't even really remember the names of the companies. Consumers Life comes to mind, Transport Life. Fidelity Bankers Life was another company. These were companies that were A-rated companies with best. And this was back before S&P got into heavily rating companies. And he got a group of these companies together and said, hey, I want to start an agency where the agents can come when their company won't do a case.

And let's help them do it. And how can we do that? And these companies basically established more creative guidelines for underwriting and started looking more at the people as individuals versus a group. Because we all know how insurance pricing works. It's basically set on groups of people. And you're in this group, and that's how you pay your premium.

So that's how they were underwriting it. Because all that pricing was basically set up on-- and again, at that time, they didn't have preferred and preferred best. It was more like standard was the best rate. And so everything was based on standard. And they just couldn't get over-- we can't look outside this box of pricing.

And we got these other companies to basically look outside the box of pricing and look at people's individuals. And that's kind of how it got started. So you had the idea of working and serving the agents who were captive or semi-captive to their companies, but who, when they had a case that their company wouldn't take based on underwriting guidelines, to go ahead and be the broker for them to help them place that case.

Exactly. Interesting. What are the most common medical conditions that wind up on your desk? We see a ton of diabetes, obviously coronary artery disease is another one, cancers. Those would be the three primaries. There's obviously anything that could technically be wrong with someone could come across my desk. But on a daily basis, I'm dealing with those probably 80% of the time.

So let's start with diabetes. Someone's listening. They say, I've got diabetes. I need some life insurance. They haven't gone through the state. They don't have a broker, an agent that's working with them yet. What does somebody with diabetes need to know to be able to A, even place the case, and B, improve their rates if they go out and are trying to get a policy?

Well, it really comes down to how that individual's diabetes is controlled. There's obviously still uninsurable type scenarios, but there is as good as standard scenarios when it comes to diabetes. You basically need to know date of onset, how it's controlled, is there family history, are they doing the right things, are they going to their doctor on a regular basis, are there readings within a parameter, different things like that.

So somebody's been declined in the past, and they say, I want to get life insurance. The steps that they need to be taking is, number one, consistently visiting with their doctor, doing what their doctor says, and getting their A1C levels to an acceptable range. And what would be the range, in your guess, for someone with diabetes who's doing their A1C readings?

Anything up to A is writable. It's going to be rated. The companies would rather see less than seven. And less than seven is actually pretty good control for a diabetic. But up to eight is writable. Sometimes over eight is writable. Again, it just kind of depends on the different things that you're looking at.

But the primary thing that the companies are looking for these days is someone who actually listens to their doctor and goes to the doctor on a regular basis and is checking the things that they need to. The number one issue that hurts us is people who think they know more than their doctor.

And that happens a lot now because of the internet. We talked before about how things were back then versus now. And let's face it, information is a dime a dozen on the internet. You could Google diabetes and read for days. And some people do that. And then they think they know more than their doctor, and it's really not the case.

- Heart disease. What are the types of heart disease that can just skate in without any ratings? What are the types that are mildly rated? Where do you get into severe and decline? - The interesting thing about heart disease is there's so many different things attached to it. And obviously, believe it or not, the easiest one to underwrite is a heart attack.

- Why? - Because you know it happened. - Right, okay. - It's a very findable issue, and it's a very treatable issue. Either by catheterization, bypass surgery, stenting, whatever the source may be that's needed to handle that. But it's actually kind of a cut and dry illness. And with the advances in medicine, the doctors can see in your arteries, they can see how your valves are working, they can see all that kind of stuff going on.

So it is very treatable. And again, if you follow what your doctors say and you follow a diet, you do some exercise, and you're not a couch potato, then that definitely works out. The harder things to write are carotid artery issues. And that's actually where most plaque begins, because then you're kind of going from CAD to stroke, possibilities, those things become hard to underwrite.

Tachycardias and arrhythmias, which are just basically different abnormal heartbeats, those are very difficult, because those are electrical responses that have to then do with your brain and the cycle of your body. So those become a little harder to underwrite. Valve disease is also coronary artery disease, and it just depends on how your valves are functioning.

If you've had a valve replacement, that's actually good, depending on the valve replacement when it was done, because most valve replacements have to be redone. So if you have a 10-year shelf life, come and get your insurance two years after you have the valve done, and keep it in force, because closer to 10 years, we may be looking at, well, you know what, he could be having issues with that valve now, and there might be, you know, it doesn't mean that it has to be replaced after 10 years, but there's more of a likelihood it's having an issue again.

- I know rules of thumb are dangerous, but if someone's had a condition, should they wait a certain amount of time? Should they wait a year and then go start investigating insurance? Or should they investigate right away? Should they wait two years? What advice would you give in general?

- I'm glad you asked me that, because we get a lot of calls from guys who do wait, and my advice is to call me right away. And the reason for that is, depending on severity of the issue, let's say a heart attack, for instance, if you had a heart attack, and it was just because you had one artery that was a little bit clogged, and they were able to go in and sten it, we could look at you after three months, possibly very favorably.

So waiting on that could actually be a negative, because if you're disease is kind of growing, and you waited two or three years, you could end up with three or four arteries that are started now occluding. So you get to a point where there's, obviously the opportune time to get covered is before you have any issues.

At a young age, you get your coverage, you can keep it in force, but if you're not able to do that, or you didn't know what you needed, then waiting can sometimes be a hindrance. Now, it may be that you call me and say, "Hey, listen, my buddy had triple bypass yesterday, and I'm gonna tell you, we'll come back in six months to a year." But at least we have that conversation.

- Explain how the insurance companies handle information, and answer if it's a good idea to go ahead and make some formal inquiries or formal application early, 'cause then you're on the record, and you're on the record, well, explain, just to split them apart, number one, explain how the insurance companies share information among themselves.

- Well, the number one way is through MIB, which is the Medical Information Bureau. And back in the early days, that used to be sporadic, because it was up to individuals to physically write out a report and mail it to MIB. Now, we're talking prior to fax machines, email, et cetera.

Now, it's all electronic, so the underwriter does it as they're underwriting the case. So the chances of a missed MIB hit are scarce. Your information is gonna be uploaded to MIB. - So when you make an application to an insurance company, they're going to upload your information to the Medical Information Bureau, and it's fully accessible then to any other insurance company who subscribes to the MIB, which is all of them, right?

- Exactly. And they basically just code for details. They don't give a lot of detail. What they're gonna do is they're gonna code MIB that an application's been submitted, and then if they find you have diabetes, they'll code you for diabetes. They don't tell what they've done with it.

So another company can't really get the information that, oh, company A offered me a rating. They're not gonna get that information. They're just gonna get that they were looked at for a certain impairment. And what we do find on MIB is the companies do code everything. I probably have more cases that get declined because the client wasn't upfront with us about an issue they had that is coded on MIB.

And that can be anywhere from alcoholism to a bad driving record to past drug use to a medical impairment. Those are the kind of things that we get stung with quite a bit. - So the client thinks, 'cause most people, it's written on every insurance application. I hereby authorize Insurance Company X to disclose my information to the Medical Information Bureau.

No one reads it. No one has a clue that they're signing it. So many people, I think, have this idea that they're going to, well, I'm just not gonna tell 'em and they're not gonna see it. And the answer to that is if you've made any application ever which codes certain information, yeah, I had a DUI, boom, that's in there.

And if you don't disclose it, you're doing yourself a major, you're causing a major problem. - Exactly. You could be a prime candidate for insurance and get declined for a misstatement or a misrepresentation or just flat out not saying something on application. - So then you get into, okay, what do I do?

'Cause if I know that system and I'm looking at myself and I'm saying, "All right, I probably should get some insurance, "but I've got this issue." (laughs) I don't wanna, I know that I can't misrepresent something to use legal language. I can't lie. So I'm just gonna choose not to deal with my issue.

Is that the right course of action? Or how do you work through that? - The easiest way for us to help with that, that I see and that I tell our agents is we can talk to, well, we can't talk to the client personally, just there's legal issues about that.

But I can have a conversation with an agent without a client's name, with their age instead of date of birth and with the primary things going on with that individual. And I can use, number one, my knowledge, and number two, going to company underwriters anonymously. That is the one nice thing about what we do is we can at least get a preliminary look.

And with that, obviously, it's not gonna be any guarantee that you're going to get insured, but you can go back to the client with, "Hey, we went to the companies "and if what you're telling me "is really all the information, "we're looking at this premium. "And if you feel you can afford that premium, "then there's no reason we shouldn't go ahead and apply." 'Cause again, unless something comes out of left field, you've got a good chance of getting this.

And that's one of the services we offer our guys. We don't need all of the information up front. We don't need any distinguishing information for that client specifically to kind of give them an idea of what we can do. - Back to cancer. Most of the time you hear the cancer diagnosis, "I'm doomed, I'm never getting life insurance again." Is that true?

(laughs) - No, it's not. I would say on average, cancer is the toughest thing to underwrite. It's because there's so many different things that can happen with it. But it really, again, comes down to the individual, comes down to what kind of cancer, where the cancer is located, what kind of treatment, whether there was metastasis of the cancer, all of those different things.

Minor skin cancers are no big deal. You can underwrite right away. More invasive skin cancers are postpones, flat extras. And then you get into the different kinds of cancers, organ cancers and whatever else, brain cancers, those kinds of things. And it just, again, depends on what has been happening.

Obviously early detection, which everyone wants anyway for longevity, is a key to underwriting also. If you get to it early and you get the treatments, and obviously there's no cure, as they say, but there is being in remission. And remission is good enough for the companies. And that's what they're looking for.

- So what you're saying is listen to Joshua and get your life insurance now while you don't need it. (laughing) - The interesting thing too is what I think we should say in addition to that is obviously the younger you are, figure out your need and at least get some coverage.

I mean, obviously when you're younger, you can't afford as much coverage as you'll hopefully be able to afford later on in life, but get something in place. Worst case that I've seen is people who just don't get any insurance, they're 55 and they get diagnosed with cancer and it's the type that we're just never gonna be able to underwrite it.

- Right. - You get a situation like that and it actually makes me sad to think-- - I hate it. - That's something that I just can't help somebody with. And you'd like to and there's just nothing you can do for that person. So obviously buying young and healthy is the name of the game.

The issue in addition to that would be finding the right product because I can't tell you how many times someone comes to me and says, you know, I really only have a 10 year need for this coverage. And then 10 years down the road, those are the people who are calling me and saying, well, you know, I really messed that up.

I need coverage for at least another 10 years. So you're looking at higher rates because of age difference, you're 10 years older. And obviously as you get older, you have more possibility of getting some health things. I mean, whether it's even cholesterol and high blood pressure and something of that matter, those things come into effect and they might not come into effect where you're actually a rated impaired risk case, but you're gonna go from best preferred now up to standard.

And you're 10 years older and you're looking to do this coverage again. So really overthink how long you think you might need it. - What's your trick for doing that? Is it just to go with a longer term? Do you try, if you were, you know, if we were sitting down over drinks and you're giving me advice, young father, do you point me toward 30 year term, 20 year term with renewability?

Like how do you approach it personally? - I usually look at, you know, exactly. Young father, your need is gonna be at least 30 years. And again, that's without you and I having much of a conversation about it, but I can tell you flat out, you're gonna need coverage for 30 years.

You think you're gonna wanna just have coverage to get your kids up through college, but then you think, oh, well, you know, by that time I'm gonna have one heck of a mortgage hanging over me and yeah, I might wanna like keep that coverage then for my wife who might get stuck with this mortgage or you know, whatever else might be going on.

And you know, then by that time, you know, maybe have grandkids, you know, those needs always continue. You know, it's not something that really goes away. A lot of people think it does, but the only thing that really goes away, I think in our business is the business side of insurance.

You know, I mean, obviously if you have a five year agreement with someone and at the end of that agreement, there's gonna be a buyout and you wanna ensure that buyout then that's an obvious, hey, five year need. I see that. But you know, when it's personal and it's family and you're trying to do the right thing by your loved ones, I'm not sure that need ever really totally goes away.

- I had the experience and when I got in, excuse me, when I got into the insurance business, I was a buy term, invest the difference until you're self-insured. That was my philosophy. So you're gonna be self-insured, you're not gonna want insurance. So I remember kind of beating my head against the wall.

Here I was, 23 years old, talking to 50 year old people and basically telling them, well, you're not gonna want your insurance. I'm like, are you kidding me? And what I've learned is that it seems that once you've had life insurance for a while, not everybody, there are exceptions, but it seems my experience has been number one, most people don't self-insure because generally they increase their lifestyle and they wanna enjoy it.

You know, you've got your Harley and they update the, they move to the golf club and they go ahead and buy the fancy boat. And yes, they're not being necessarily irresponsible, but they go ahead and upgrade and they got a little bit of a bigger mortgage and they're living a little higher lifestyle and they technically could be okay without the insurance, but technically okay doesn't feel as good as really okay.

Then the other thing is I think we just get used to it. Like right now, I often, if I find myself in some dangerous situation or some close call, I just think, thankful that I have life insurance. And that happens enough and you start to think, well, that's really nice to have that feeling.

And you start to appreciate it a lot more than I could conceive of when I was just kind of doing it based on theory alone. - Right. Well, and that is what happens a lot of times. And for me on a personal level, my father passed away with very little insurance.

And unfortunately, because I was his son, he would never talk to me about his insurance need because in his eyes, he would always know more than I did about it. And so I never pushed it. And back when my parents were growing up, $100,000 was a lot of money.

So he had $100,000 worth of insurance, but he died 20 years ago and all the kids were out of the house. So he figured, you know what, I don't need to, my wife doesn't need a bunch of coverage. The kids are gone, they're on their own. They're taking care of themselves.

Well, my mother had never worked. And all of a sudden she was saddled with a mortgage and outstanding bills and just taxes, different things that you forget about on a daily basis that you write checks for. And he had left her $100,000 policy with a $40,000 loan against it.

So she ended up with about 60,000 of net, out of the policy. And to me that stings and that hits home, very close to home. My mom had to go to work. - Yeah, and she'd been out of the job force for 20 years, 30 years. - Yeah, forever.

And it's those kinds of things that, like you referred to, is there are people who believe in insurance and there's people who have insurance because someone talked them into it. So there's always gonna be that separation. But you're right, people who believe in insurance understand what it's really used for and what good it can do for people.

Those are the people who you're gonna be able to have the good conversation with and they're gonna listen and you're gonna direct them in the right thing. And you are right about the buy term and invest the rest. You would have been a great A.L. Williams rep back in the day.

- I'm gonna get him on the show one of these days. I really, he lives here in Palm Beach. I'm gonna get him on the show. - But that's a great concept. There's nothing wrong with that concept. But like you referred to, it's how many people actually do it.

And honestly, I would have to guess maybe 1% would actually do that. Because if you're young, you don't have the money, so you'll say, okay, I'm gonna buy this inexpensive term and I'm gonna, my idea is in five years I'll be able to start that investment side. And then you maybe forget about it or things don't go exactly.

I mean, let's face it, things don't always go exactly as we planned them. So you come up short on that investment side and then, like you said, as you get older, you're like, hey, I've got this insurance in place so my loved ones are taken care of and I've got this money right now.

I wanna bigger house, country club, boat, motorcycle, whatever it might be. And you just never get to that investment side of it. - Yeah. The challenge, it's funny, on the by term and best the difference. One of the things I've been learning as I've grown older and matured, and I learned this a lot with clients, but I realized that when I was younger I was very intrigued by concepts and I wanted to be right.

And so I would always pick the right idea and often I wouldn't actually follow through. So it's like, well, I know this is the right thing to do so because I know this is the right thing to do, I've done it. Well, no, not necessarily. You have to actually follow through and do it.

And I'm not the only one. A lot of people do that, is we know the right thing to do but we haven't actually done it. So we know, oh, I'm gonna get rich 'cause I invest in stocks. Well, wait a second, have I actually sat down and reviewed my portfolio?

Have I actually sat down and figured out how much I'm setting aside? Have I actually done some calculations of how much this is gonna be worth? Or am I just fooling myself by making myself feel good because I know the right thing to do? So it's an interesting debate.

I wanna go back to underwriting. Talk to me about drugs and life insurance. - Well, I'm currently not taking any. (both laughing) You know, the drug situation is interesting. Up until about five years ago, it had gotten actually quite easy to underwrite alcoholism, drug addictions, things like that. Now it's twice as hard.

- Why? - I think there are more people more prone to wanting to try things. And you've got a basis of young kids now who have more access to things. And there's so many different drugs out there and people are like, well, I'm gonna try this and see what happens.

And the unfortunate thing that we've learned through underwriting, and some of the good things that come out of underwriting, by the way, that do help is we find out trends. Trends circulate through the insurance business just as much as they do anywhere else. And we're actually pretty good at predicting what's gonna happen with different things.

And unfortunately, 80% of people who go through a 30-day rehab relapse within three years. - Wow. - So, you know, the rehabs are great. I'm not poo-pooing on a rehab. If you need it, use it. Good thing, but it usually takes people three times to finally, and that's if you're the kind of person who really has it in you to wanna quit, then it's like two to three times it takes for that to happen.

And the companies know this. You know, we've seen it. So when you get somebody who just came out of rehab, they're in their early to mid-30s, they're probably gonna relapse. So it then comes down to what were they doing before because they're probably gonna step it up a notch when they do it again.

- What about, is there a difference between marijuana and other drugs from the perspective of life insurance underwriting? - So the interesting thing about marijuana is the legalization of it anywhere has not changed the underwriting process. However, if you're a casual user, the insurance companies almost ignore it. You know, they've really taken on the idea that it's not a terrible thing to do once in a while.

- Right. - And they're looking at it as alcohol. They think the same thing with alcohol. If you're having a couple beers on the weekends, you have a glass of wine every night, that's not the worst thing ever. We're fine with that. It's the people who go to extremes that they're looking for.

So the worst thing you get on casual marijuana use in insurance underwriting currently is you might get a smoker rate. You know, they're gonna get you for the smoking part. So, but again, here's where we come down to admitted or not admitted. People are afraid to admit it because it's technically illegal.

- Can't count the number of times. Well, I'll take the medical exam in two weeks. - Right. - Here we go. - Exactly. So, you know, but you have to convince somebody to admit it because it is an illegal activity. So people are afraid to put that down in writing.

- Right, understandably so. - Yeah, but what they have to understand is the insurance company is not looking to call a DEA and say, hey, listen, I've got, you know, this stack of people, you know, over here. - Send them over, they've tested positive for THC. - So, you know, they're not doing that, but admitting it is the first thing because if you don't admit it and we find out about it, whether through testing or MIB, whatever the source may be, you're gonna get declined for not admitting it.

But so the casual marijuana use is treated somewhat like casual alcohol use. Obviously, cocaine use is a no-no. You know, that's gonna get you an auto decline and that's gonna be at least for two years from the last time you used. Alcoholism, ironically, a lot of people who get DUIs, companies will give you one DUI usually, but they still won't underwrite you for two years, but they'll give you one without totally holding it over your head.

What they don't like to see is people who go to rehab to get out of their DUI because then you're admitting you're an alcoholic and you're postponed for even longer for going to rehab. - Interesting. - So it's a catch-22. It might get you leniency on your DUI, but it's gonna get you tougher underwriting if you went through rehab.

- I had a buddy of mine, had a DUI, and he had talked about, he didn't really need insurance, but he, maybe I, you know, whatever. You know, I might buy some insurance. It's cheap, didn't really need it. Had a DUI. Thank goodness. Well, you know, I didn't really need it.

Just let it go. There was no point in it. I think it was the two years passed and he got insurance and I got another DUI. And I was so thankful that he had just gone ahead and, you know, single guy, and he's like, ah, whatever, it's 25 bucks a month.

It makes me feel good. I got a million dollars of insurance. It helps Joshua, sells a policy. I didn't push him on it. He just said, hey, if you wanna do it, I think it's a good plan. But thankfully he got it locked in for the second one. - That's a good story because after the second one, it would have been very difficult.

- Yep. - Yeah, it's a tough situation then. But yeah, I mean, again, it comes down to each person's situation. - Lifestyle choices regarding sports, flying. Do you have companies that you go to? Just explain how does flying and private pilot, that kind of stuff, work from an underwriting perspective.

- Totally opposite of what people think it does. The more you fly, the better we are with it. And people don't understand that. But it's the occasional weekend warrior flyer that we don't want. 'Cause those are the guys who don't have as much training. They don't have as many hours behind the stick.

And they're apt to take more chances than a normal pilot would. Or someone who's doing it on a more regular basis. So what the companies usually look for is instrument flight rating. They love it. You don't have to have it, but if you have it, that's just a, that kind of glosses over anything else they may be looking at.

300 hours of experience with at least 75 to 100 hours a year flying is usually not even a rateable instance. As long as you're only flying in the US. You're not making low level trips to the Bahamas or Mexico or something like that, then you're okay. But it's the people who don't fly much who just got their pilot's license for giggles and they fly once or twice a year.

Those are the people who are gonna have a hard time getting coverage or you're gonna pay a flat extra for it. - Racing. - Depends on the racing. If it's sanctioned racing, it's usually not a big issue. - Sanctioned, you mean like-- - Like NASCAR, Indy, those kinds of people.

But I will tell you that those kinds of people don't buy insurance. - What do you mean? - Because they're risk takers and-- - They just don't care. - They're looking for the thrill and they really don't do it. We get very few professional drivers at all. And we hear about it through the industry.

So we'll know if people are doing it or not. And not many of them ever apply for insurance. - So it is interesting. But it's usually, again, it's the weekend warrior drag racers who wanna go up to West Palm Beach, go to Moroso and drive their really fast car down the quarter mile and kill themselves in it.

Those are the guys who have a hard time getting coverage. The actual NASCAR guys probably wouldn't be that big of a deal overall. But there are times, what you have to remember is you look at the higher point NASCAR guys. There's also just thousands and thousands of guys who are racing dirt track, Enduro bikes, different things like that.

And those are usually flat extra. - I never placed a racing case. I just never came across a driver who was racing, so it's interesting. - Again, most people who are thrill takers do not buy insurance, buy life insurance. We get very few skydivers. Skydiving is one that is, if you're doing it a lot, it is a rateable situation.

But we don't get many. Down here in Florida, we get mostly scuba divers. And unless you're going past 100 feet, they don't consider that risky at all. And again, it's not a rateable situation. Any others? I'm trying to think back to the insurance applications. In the last two years, I can't even remember the special anymore, but any other avocation kind of stuff?

- I don't think so. I think we've covered it. You do get the crazy people who do those ultra light flying. I don't know whoever discovered that putting a parachute onto a big fan would be something I don't want to do. I'm like, I think I'll stay away from that activity.

That's really about it for avocation. You don't find much more. Back in the day, we actually insured a couple of professional wrestlers. - Really? - Hulk Hogan and Sergeant Slaughter were two of our clients that we had coverage on at one point. - Nice. - And again, that really wasn't impaired risk, impaired risk.

It was just more like, hey, these guys could have a little trauma here and there and we'll take care of them. But that's really about it. - So I want to go back to, as we start to wrap up here, I want to go back to the topic of policy design.

Over the years, so you have an interesting position of kind of this bird's eye view, working with a bunch of agents and passing things through. What would you say, as far as number of policies, if you were going to guess, what percentage of your cases are term, universal life, whole life?

- Currently, 50% term, 30 to 35% universal life and about 15% whole life. - Any gut feeling on how that's different than 15 years ago? - Well, 15 years ago, it would have been a little heavier stack on whole life, less on term, so it'd probably be, I would say, maybe 40% term and then 60% mixture of whole life and UL.

- How do you see, so I'll tell you my concern with universal life, feel free to disagree. I'm not looking for a yes answer, I'm just curious. Here's my concern with universal life. My observation working with clients has been that almost everybody who sits through a life insurance presentation loves some sort of cash value policy.

However, they don't love whole life premiums. They love term premiums, but they love cash values and so you slide in a nice universal life policy and say, well, this gets cash values and it has lower premiums. And my concern here is about the potential conflict of interest on the side of the agent because if I know, yeah, 1,000 bucks a year for term, 10,000 bucks a year for whole life, but you can't afford 10, but you can afford a little more than 1,000, I have an incentive to talk you into something that's gonna be three to four.

And there's a substantial increase in my commission there for doing so and now I've introduced the most complicated insurance product that exists to somebody who doesn't get insurance in general, let alone the specifics of how to properly manage a universal life insurance contract. So I get really concerned about that in the industry and I get really concerned just about the clients not understanding it.

Do you think I'm right as far as that there's a potential and the reality of agents abusing it a little bit or do you think that, well, people just, what's your thought on that? - I agree with what you're saying. I think you're on the right track. And the problem with universal life right now is that about 10 years ago, and it might be a little more than that, the company's got the great idea to guarantee universal life.

And what it started out as was what they called secondary guarantee, universal life. So you got a return on your premium, you got some cash value, but you also had a guaranteed element in there. Well, as time went on, they realized that the people who were buying the guarantee ULs didn't care about the cash value.

All that they were looking for was what I call now lifetime term insurance, which is what the guarantee UL is of this day. So for the longest time, we had to transition everybody to, okay, universal life is no longer used for cash value. It's really just used for this higher term premium guarantee scenario.

And a few companies still had current assumption products that would return, but they had maybe a five year guarantee in them. And you can't sell anybody anything that's only got a five year guarantee in it, I'm sorry. It just isn't ever gonna work out for anyone. So, they then decided about seven years ago, I think I saw the first indexed universal life contract.

So basically what you're gonna see now is if anybody's showing anyone any kind of a policy, a universal life policy with cash in it, it's probably gonna be an index. And while these products don't actually participate directly in the index, the S&P 500 index is what they're using to show the returns that the client could possibly get.

The situation comes down to where it's just very tough to show any kind of return in any kind of universal life contract anymore. The whole life I think is great because there's usually a dividend attached to it. And when you can participate in the company doing better, and you're getting some kind of a kickback, that's the cash you have to go.

But there's definitely people pushing the UL into the wrong places. Index UL for instance is good for sales up to probably age 45 to 50. And what's scary to me going to more direct to what you were talking about is that when I get a guy who calls me and says, "Hey, I've got a 65 year old, I wanna look at index UL." And I'm like-- - How do you make the numbers work?

They just don't work. - They don't. But they wanna look at that. They're like, "This is what I wanna show my client." And as much as I, you know, I don't wanna tell a guy what to go out and sell his client because I don't know his client personally.

But I do know the concepts and what these products were developed for. And that's not what they were developed for. So what scares me is that they're just being used the wrong way. And, you know, you made a comment, and I hope you don't mind if I call you on it.

But you're like, you said, you know, if I've got somebody who's looking at 10,000 a whole life premium and obviously can't afford it, they can afford $1,000 a premium, I can probably push them to the three or four. That might be the issue right there. And that's exactly what happens though.

Because I think it's what happens. And my point was that when, if you are an effective agent, if you are effective at sales, you can create a desire for the results. That's what I mean is that you can create the desire for the $10,000 policy. And that, but you need $10,000 to properly fund that policy.

And what I mean by that is somebody is saying, well, I can buy 1,000 of term, but I can scratch around and come up with a couple thousand. And I hate that conflict of interest that's there. Where you say, well, okay, this policy, it's not gonna last forever, but it's gonna last you for 34 years.

Well, meanwhile, 34 years later, the agent is gone. Clients are 22 years later, the client's sitting there, and they got a new agent. And I've been in this situation, I'm sure you have many times, and you're sitting here reviewing an in-force illustration saying, well, your policy got about 12 more years.

No, it's supposed to last forever. Well, your recommended premiums were $9,822, and you've been paying $3,000 a year. Oh, and you're that part of the curve where the rates start going up. And it's, I just, that's my issue, like, with UL. It's not that it's not incredibly useful. I mean, you can, if somebody's sophisticated and understands it, there's nothing wrong with the concept.

But who, you know, you need a sophisticated client, and frankly, we don't have many of them. - Right, and what you wanna look at, too, is that that's the fallacy with a flexible premium contract. When you go into it showing that you really need $5,000 to fund this policy, but if you have a bad year, you can put 2,500 in, what's your client gonna walk away with?

They're gonna remember, hey, you know what? I can pay 2,500, I'm still gonna have this policy. But like you said, 20 years from now, you come back and all of a sudden, they find out there's no cash. You know, they put all this money in, even if it was only 2,500, that's still a lot of money a year to put into a policy.

They put that money in and they're getting nothing, and they might even lose their coverage in five to 12 years. You know, that's the fallacy with a flexible premium product. But it's also, I think, as agents, we need to remember. 'Cause even though I don't sell, you know, I'm not out there selling personally, I am a licensed agent, and I do care about the people we're helping.

- Absolutely. - And that's what you've gotta think of first, because if you've got someone who's dangling by a thread and saying, I can pay $1,000, well, you know what? For the next three years, find them something that they can pay $1,000 into so that it stays on the books, and it stays in their life.

Because again, if you sell them the $4,000 option and they've gotta come up with the other three somewhere, how long are they gonna wanna do that? Or when Jimmy needs braces, where's that $3,000 gonna go? It's gonna go to braces. It's not gonna go into a life insurance policy.

So don't strap people as if their insurance is just another bill to pay. Their insurance has gotta be part of their planning process, and I think that's where some people lose sight. Or some people don't care. I hate to say it that way, but there's just some-- - There are.

- There are people who don't care. - I don't know what the percentage is, but there's scumbags in every business. It's interesting. I learned the hard way myself. When I started selling insurance, I'm a very excited person, and so I worked on, okay, how can I be a great salesperson?

And one of the things I learned was with good intention, I wasn't being necessarily intentionally evil. I wasn't trying to do something. But I was so excited about painting the picture for the person that I learned that I was sometimes too persuasive. And then I would have a client who six months later, they felt really good.

They didn't have buyer's remorse the next day or the next week or the next month, but the problem was I had overcommitted them to whatever it was that they were doing, the amount of money to their IRA or the amount of money in their life insurance policy. And then all of a sudden, I had a series of clients, and okay, Joshua, I gotta cash out the IRA.

No, I gotta cancel the policy. No. - Right. - And I just, I hated that. Because I felt responsible because they were behind. Whether it was if it was insurance, they was too soon, and we hadn't even caught up with costs, policy inception costs, commissions, and all that stuff yet.

Or if it was IRAs, we're taking tax money out, and they're behind the curve. And I learned to be myself less persuasive because I needed to avoid getting the client excited and saying, yeah, I'll write big checks to my future. Where's the investment? And I had to actually change my mindset and be a little bit more relaxed and say, okay, I know you're excited now.

Let's start with less or put some money into a side fund, and let's come back in six months, and six months, and six months. Which was the exact opposite of what I thought was gonna be my approach when I started studying sales. - Well, the good thing about your process is you learn from it.

- Yeah. - There's a lot of people who don't, or again, they just don't care to learn from it. And I think that could be the hurtful side for the client, is you definitely want somebody who cares. And I think that's what planners in general have to remember is treat everyone like they're your mom or your dad.

I mean, would you do that to your mom or your dad? And if you wouldn't, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it with these people. And take that concept a little more broadly. And you're much better off to keep things on the books. And believe me, most people who you help will remember that later on when you come back for policy reviews or for future sales, or when they need something, and they feel that they wanna come to you, they're gonna come to you then.

- What do you see as the future of the career of the life insurance agent? - Career agents are hurting. It's not a great time to be a career agent. And I don't say that to be a negative. I think it's the reality. Most companies who used to recruit agents and work with them and help them build their business and really give them a platform to be successful are few and far between.

I'm not gonna name names. There's a couple of companies who do still do that and do a really good job at that. There are companies who are currently only recruiting top of the table MDRT qualifying agents right now. If you don't qualify at least MDRT, you could lose your job.

You could be an agent for 20 years and you just went along, you never cared about MDRT. You were like, hey, I'm good with this, where I'm at with this, I'm helping people, I'm doing it. You can find yourself an independent pretty quick. The companies just aren't training and they don't wanna put the effort into training and recruiting newer people and helping them grow a business.

Again, there's still a couple of companies out there that are doing a really good job, but here locally I know the talk is people are cross-recruiting and trying to pull agents away from other companies that already have their book of business and that's what they wanna look at. So the unfortunate side of that is there's different, I don't know if you would call them companies, but there's different resources out there for agents to learn and to be taught, but they're fairly expensive.

They're not hands-on where you have a mentor in the office you can go to, so it makes being an independent really tough. But that's the way a lot of guys are gonna probably have to go. And that's when a decent, having some decent background and knowing what you're doing, hopefully you can get that in before something else happens.

But that's how I see it. I know the internet and you can go online and buy insurance and you can do those different things. I never, I still don't believe that's gonna take away from the career agent. You're gonna always get people who are kind of like buying small policies that you can't live selling anyway, but I still think the relationship side of the business and being a good agent and caring about your clients is what's gonna keep things going for guys.

- I just don't see how, and I know we've talked about this privately, you and I, I don't see, when you have a little bit of experience and you start to see all the ways that can go wrong, I feel, so it's been almost a year now that I've been out of the day-to-day, I feel like I'm losing touch.

There have been so many changes and I feel like I'm losing touch with change in the marketplace. And yes, somebody who's completely healthy and not a single issue whatsoever, no risk factors at all, just kind of says, "I'll buy 20 times my income of life insurance." They can, you can go online to whatever term, lifeinsurance.com or whatever version of it is, plunk the numbers in, blah, blah, blah, and that 20-year term, it's probably gonna be fine.

Chances are it's an A-rated company, chances it's a cheap policy, pay the premium, it's probably gonna be fine, probably. But you change any factor at all. And I don't see any way that the average consumer is gonna be effectively able to negotiate that maze without somebody to hold their hands.

And I don't see how many of the companies that advertise, as far as the brokerage agencies, I don't see how they can train people who answer the phone with the depth of knowledge that they need to give a really professional answer. And so my problem is that I empathize and understand with the people who don't wanna be life insurance agents 'cause I didn't wanna be a life insurance agent.

When I started 23 years old in 2008, what 23-year-old in 2008 says, "I'm gonna go be a life insurance agent." - Exactly. - It was just a means to an end for me to become the Mr. Financial Planner. But now that I see the value, I could go the other way and I could happily just do life insurance because of the value there.

But I don't see that message being talked about in the industry and it really concerns me. - Yeah, it really isn't a message that's out there for any of us. Everybody wants assets under management, is a big word I hear constantly. They wanna know, "What are your assets under management?

"How much wealth planning are you doing?" And things like that. And to me, it all kinda goes together. I mean, wealth planning is great, that's perfect. If you've got the clients who are doing that. But there's probably an insurance need there too. And if you have other clients that you have access to that maybe don't have that wealth and just need the insurance planning, that's where it oughta be.

Yeah, I don't understand it either. The interesting thing I find about the online buying, I've actually listened to some conversations in different places and I never tell people what I do when I'm listening to the conversations. But there's an opinion out there that if you go directly to these online places to buy your life insurance, that you're getting the cheapest insurance anywhere.

- I'm glad you said that, 'cause I was gonna get the very next question. - What's interesting about that is that there's no difference in premium to what they're getting versus what I can show my agents to sell 'em across the board either. So what's happening for the companies is a nice thing for them, is that they're selling insurance policies without paying anyone a commission to do it.

Or a very small commission. Obviously there's a money switching hands there somewhere, but it's probably a lot less than, but the client's not getting any benefit from that. It's not like they're getting $10 a month cheaper on their term insurance because they bought it online versus taking a half an hour to talk with an agent and make sure they're getting the right thing.

- Yeah, that's exactly the, I'm glad you point that out, 'cause I think people don't realize that. And if I'm gonna sell a Banner Life policy, whether you go to termlifeinsurance.com and buy your 20-year Banner Life, or you buy it from Joshua, either Joshua makes his 500 bucks, or termlifeinsurance.com makes the 500 bucks.

But at least with Joshua, you can get an hour or two or three of my time, and I'll make sure that, and help answer your questions, and it's not completely blind. It's a little better than an online calculator. And so, I think people don't recognize that and realize that.

Do you know of any life insurance company that sells insurance without commissions, without paying somebody commissions? - Off the top of my head for what we do and the market we're in now, you might find that some of the smaller guarantees, you type products. - Good call. - There's a few companies that offer no medical questions, you can't be declined, everyone's seeing the advertisements.

Those are probably non-commissioned products that are direct with the company, kind of a direct buy situation. But I don't think there's anybody who's doing anything substantial that isn't paying a commission to someone to do it. - So, this gets my fee-only buddies really upset because they're like, "Oh, we can do investments without commissions.

"Why can't we do insurance without commissions "and stay fee-only?" Do you think it'll happen? Do you think any of the companies will try to work within that? Because that's the press that the market is pushing and the consumers seem to be pushing is towards the concept of fee-only, without talking about whether it's a good concept or not a concept.

Can you see it happen? - I don't see it happening. I just don't see the life insurance companies getting to that point. There's a little bit of commission competitiveness between companies. And I think they get the feeling, whether it's right or wrong, that that's helping them push product. If you pay five points more, maybe somebody's gonna push your product over XYZ company that's paying a little bit less.

But here at our agency, we're more about quality of company and where the need fits. Not to mention we're underwriting most of our cases. So, it's not just a cut and dry, hey, I'm gonna send you to company A or B. I've gotta look at company A through Z and kind of figure out where it's going.

But I haven't personally heard any talk about insurance companies wanting to do life products on a fee-only basis. I'm sure it's probably getting talked about behind closed doors, but I don't see any move in that direction at this point. - It'd be interesting to watch. It'll be interesting to watch.

I just was curious if you'd heard any scuttle. So, as we close, tell, just give the audience just a little bit of idea about your company and who you can serve. I know you're not individually working with individuals, so they can't necessarily call you with any life insurance. But if somebody's a broker, they can connect with you and reach out to you.

Go ahead and-- - Yeah, we work with brokers in helping them get their clients what they need. We don't deal directly with the public and I just think that's a better concept for us in the way that we do business. We'd rather deal with the agents who have already got their situation in place and kind of use us as a secondary source to help them get to the end.

And that's what we do well. And again, the impaired risk is our primary. I mean, we can write anything, for preferred best, the highest rating there is. But my background is primarily impaired risk underwriting. So that's where I'm gonna be the strongest with most things. - And I guess I would say the one thing that individual consumers could do, if you find yourself in a situation where you are facing some kind of impaired risk situation, ask your, find a life insurance agent and your life insurance agent can reach out to Todd.

And if nothing else, you know, Todd, you work with people from all over, in many companies, many independents, you work with dozens of companies and you're a good resource. So just ask your agent, say, at least reach out to this guy and see if you can do it. Because just because you get a decline in one place, I mean, the case that you got for me, we never placed it.

But the one that just, it was early in my career and I didn't have a clue what to do, except I had this person and usually, usually life insurance, life insurance sales is an interesting business 'cause there's a little, usually a little bit of tension, there's a little bit of desire, but I don't wanna talk about it 'cause no one wants to get into it.

So I remember I walked into this office one time and it was at a university and I was speaking with this lady and she's like, "Oh, you sell life insurance?" I said, "Yeah." And she said, "Oh, tell you what, "we would love to have some life insurance." Said, "But I gotta warn you, "it's for my husband and he's been declined "three times in the last year." And I said, "Oh, I'm totally wet behind the ears, "I don't have a clue." And I was like, "Well, give me the information." You know, super eager, well, I'll do my best.

You know, so I write down all the information, I called her husband, find out what he needed and just what people said was, you know, the guys in my office, "Call Todd." So I called Todd and we submitted the case, we submitted an informal inquiry and we got an offer.

And the cool thing about it, we couldn't place the case because it didn't make, even though it was an offer, it was still too much and it didn't make sense for the client. The need wasn't that great compared to the cost of the premiums. But it gave me a real confidence to feel like I knew I could add some value.

And that was what I struggled with, was confidence and knowing that I added value. Anytime you're in a sales situation, you gotta know like, okay, here's why I'm worth this money. And I felt like, oh, I could get people insurance that three other agents couldn't get 'cause I've got Todd Simpson in my back pocket.

So thank you. - I'm glad to hear that and I'm glad we could help out. And it is interesting, Joshua, because obviously not every case gets placed. I mean, just because we can get an offer doesn't mean it's gonna be affordable for somebody. But I like to hear that we were able to do that for you.

And I hope it doesn't sound corny that after 31 years, that's my favorite part about the business is to have somebody tell me that I helped them. And I'm not gonna say it's just as good as a paycheck. (laughing) - The two together is a pretty good combination. - Exactly.

I'd like to get paid and feel good. - Todd, thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. - Anytime, I appreciate you having me. Thank you. (whooshing) - So now you've been behind the scenes of the life insurance business. And hopefully some of you who are younger, who don't think much about life insurance, hopefully you benefited from my talking about all those different disease things, the different special risks of medical risks, different occupation and avocation risks.

That stuff matters. And it's a challenge to know how to express that because on the one hand, a lot of people don't really need insurance and you can't ever buy a ton of insurance just 'cause someday you might need it. That would be unwise. But yet sometimes you could be thankful of buying insurance before you needed it.

I think of the story I shared in that interview with that friend of mine who had gotten a DUI. That's a big deal with insurance underwriting. Now, as far as where the right move is, I don't know. Some people are open to the idea of insurance. They like insurance.

I've learned that I tend to be in that situation. I don't like too much insurance. I really don't like to spend a lot of money on premiums. But there are some types of insurance that make me feel really good. Again, I had life insurance before I was ever married because I wanted it there to support my family.

Now, I was certainly biased in that I was an insurance agent. So was I just doing it so that I would buy into my product or did I really buy it because I valued it? Well, in the beginning, I think I was just doing it because I valued my product, but then I, excuse me, because I was trying to be consistent and I needed to own what I sold.

But then I've discovered the feelings of owning it. And I started to have that same experience with other people. So I leave you free, obviously, to make your own decision. But consider if having a bit of an insurance plan in place at an earlier age might not help, at least something minimal.

The way I look at it is I waste money, believe it or not, I waste money. I waste $10 here, $20 there. I try not to, but having $20 a month of term life insurance premiums in place to have half a million dollars of coverage as a young guy, to me, didn't really feel like that big of a problem.

And it can open up a lot of options as time goes on. Hope this was useful to you. If any of you are in need of insurance and you have a special risk, ask your broker, find an insurance agent, ask them to work with Todd. They do a great job.

So that's the best solution that I have for you there to be able to improve your situation. You can't work with him directly. But I will tell you a secret. Well, it's not I'm about to tell you, but I guess not technically a secret. I should be careful. But their website is called thestamagency.com.

The, T-H-E, STAM, S-T-A-M-M, agency.com. They have on that kit, excuse me, on their website, it's not a consumer facing website. It's not intended for the general public. It's intended for brokers, actual life insurance agents. But they have a tool on there that's called Term Quotes. And this is a quoting system that will quote for you insurance policies with actual premiums.

Now, of course, you don't know exactly what underwriting classification you're gonna get. Although on that, you can use it and you can talk about any prospective ratings or what you think the classification will be. This is not a consumer friendly tool in the sense of it's not a click through menu system.

This is an agent tool. This is exactly the same quoting tool that I've used many times. But this is the first place I go to get quotes. But the secret is this is a way that you can get term quotes without having to get your name onto a solicitation list.

Oftentimes, many of the websites out there, you have to put your name in, your info in, and then that puts you on the list. Then you gotta get the calls from the life insurance agent. So sometimes some of you will do that and you put in a fake name and a fake email address and a fake phone number and all that.

Well, if you wanna bypass that, and you're just interested in trying to figure out what would be some quotes for life insurance, you can use this quote engine here. And again, you can't buy it on here. You have to work with an agent, but this will give you the prices across companies.

And some of you that are kind of interested in the actual behind the scenes stuff will benefit from this. So you'll find that it's thestamagency.com. Click on term quotes and you can put in the information and you can figure out all the details. You can see all the carriers, you can see all the premiums.

If you know of a certain number of ratings, you can put the table rating in there. Again, it's not a consumer focused site, it's an agent site. But some of you will like being able to quote insurance without having to go through the solicitation process, the marketing tool that many of the online quote engines will do.

So there's my little tip of the day. Thank you all so much for listening. I ran out of music, but if you've enjoyed this content, if you'd like to see me do more of it, I would be thrilled if you would support the show, please. You can do that at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

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