What is life insurance? At its essence, it’s a contract, but it could mean so much more to your family and it can be essential to protecting your financial legacy. Contact The Unger Company to learn more about how we can help.
What the heck is life insurance?
The Unger Company has five decades of experience in this business, so for us this is generally a deep dive with many details. Yeah, we could spin your head…but we’ll try not to.
The basics here are really interesting. We are very much a product of a 20th century perspective on insurance, so we took a moment to do some reading and reflecting on the history life insurance. The amazing thing to us is that you can trace the idea of life insurance to the Roman Empire – basically 2,500 years ago. It all began with burial societies. For instance, soldiers would join a burial society, and would chip in to bury their comrades when they died. The right kind of burial was very important in the Roman culture, so this made sense. (In an extension of this concept, one of the most popular types of life insurance today is the burial policy.)
The modern life insurance industry started in 1583 in England, when the first policy was issued. Not so modern, I guess. From there, the industry grew into what it is today.
Life insurance, at its most basic, is a contract drafted between an insurer and the policy owner (sometimes the insured him/herself) for his/her beneficiary, obligating the insurer to pay a benefit at the time of the insured’s death. One aspect of life insurance penetration that isn’t often considered is that it is an indicator of a society’s wealth: as people in a society acquire more wealth, they seek to protect it and transfer wealth to succeeding generations. In the United States, the life insurance industry grew greatly after World War II as Americans became increasingly wealthy and began owning real estate and having substantial savings at the end of their lives. One way to assure wealth transfer is to protect assets with life insurance, which will offset the costs associated with a person’s death, whether those are medical bills, legal expenses, or taxes.
It’s this last area where The Unger Company operates: Where death taxes need to be planned for, we are experts at deploying life insurance and other insurance products to account for the taxes that are incurred by the high-net-worth classes. The structures we advise the financial and legal team of a HNW or UHNW family are designed for asset protection and to enable wealth transfer to the succeeding generations.
Most people will be familiar with some basic insurance types, such as term life, whole life, universal life (there are numerous types of polices within this category), and annuities. What we do that is unique is that we design an appropriate “bespoke policy” for our clients, which will fit their needs, disposable income, and/or their ability to finance the coverage.
This means that we look at a number of factors, such as projected tax liabilities, potential inheritance, specific types of asset protection, and actuarial tables, and we create a portfolio of insurance products to account for the types of expenses and income needs that we forecast. Keep in mind that The Unger Company works with HNW and UHNW clients, broadly speaking these are individuals or families with net worth of $13 million or more ($26 million if a couple) – which subjects them to the federal estate tax. Our goal is to ensure that assets and wealth transfer with the least drag to their children, grandchildren, and other heirs. And these insurance contracts are an incredibly effective way to accomplish this goal.
The Unger Company, Ltd. are the experts high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families should speak with when planning wealth transfer. The Unger Company works with a client’s legal and financial team as advisors in constructing legal entities and using insurance to offset estate taxes imposed at both the federal and state levels. Our plans are elegant and effective, and our founder, Harold Unger, has achieved a tremendous success rate for transferring wealth to succeeding generations during his many decades in this business. Contact us through our website or call us at 212-755-4777 to learn what we can do for you.
Directions: https://goo.gl/maps/GaiVqoLUXoxczU7s9
Harold Unger LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harold-m-unger-9453aa73/
The Unger Company Ltd. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/93617123/
The Unger Company, Ltd. does not seek to practice law for clients and these published items are intended only to be informational in nature.
