New universal life product provides custom fit for clients… and advisors

Advisors looking for life products that are flexible in nature allowing clients to better deal with life’s changing circumstances will love this new universal life product that’s designed for the client and advisor rather than just the insurance carrier

Advisors looking for life products that are flexible in nature allowing clients to better deal with life’s changing circumstances will love this new universal life product that’s designed for the client and advisor rather than just the insurance carrier.
 
PPI launched EquiBuild Tuesday in an effort to meet the unmet insurance needs of Canadians.
 
“Canadian consumers need insurance for protection, but as their life develops they may need assets to satisfy retirement income needs, to grow their business, or simply to deal with whatever life throws at them,” says James A. Burton, Chairman and CEO. “This new hybrid universal life product can be easily adapted to meet those needs – whether it be to add more (paid-up) coverage, take a premium holiday, free up cash for a new business opportunity or to maximize growth within the product when there’s a change in market interest rates. We are excited by the opportunities this presents for clients and advisors alike.”
 
A product several years in the making, PPI is in the middle of taking the good news to advisors across the country.
 
“We actually started [designing product] about three years ago. It takes a long time to design a new product. The reality was that consumers were dealing with change in their lifestyle and traditionally most of the planning and particularly the products that were available on the life side were rigid and really didn’t think about how to deal with changes,” Burton told LHP. “The old fashioned planning assumed a person retired at 65 or died at life expectancy. Very sort of linear approaches and we realized that’s not where clients are these days.”
 
Designed by PPI in conjunction with Industrial Alliance, EquiBuild incorporates well-loved features from both whole life and universal life coverage, according to John McKay, Executive Vice-President and Actuary, PPI. These include a unique EquiBuild Bonus with significant long-term investment upside, level COI coverage with generous Guaranteed Cash Surrender Values, the introduction of a Paid-Up Addition feature to UL, two new investment options, longer-term policy liquidity and competitive MERs.
 
“We’re always talking to our key agents and it’s evident as we were evolving [design of product] that clients needed more flexibility and more options and they [agents] were custom fitting the client to the product instead of custom fitting the product to the client.”
 
That’s now changed.
 
 

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