September is Life Insurance Awareness Month. While most American’s feel life insurance is important, especially as a tool to protect their family, many do not have adequate coverage. ING shared a life insurance study, Insurance Revealed, to help support the Life Insurance Awareness Month effort. This survey provides helpful information to financial professionals, shedding light on this essential element of financial planning.
Insurance Revealed
ING U.S.
09/12/2012
Here is a list of 12 highlights from the survey’s findings:
- 44% of households have individual life insurance.
- 78% said life insurance was an important tool for estate and financial planning.
- 53% believe the current economy makes life insurance more important.
- 62% listed family as the #1 reason given to purchase life insurance.
- 61% never calculated their life insurance needs.
- 45% had rarely or never to discussed life insurance with their spouse.
- 51% of those without life insurance felt it was not affordable.
- 49% looked only to their workplace for life insurance coverage.
- Those with no access to life insurance through their workplace were 7 times more likely be without coverage.
- About 1/3 relied on a financial professional to purchase life insurance.
- 70% that used a financial professional to purchase insurance felt very confident in their coverage.
- Few recognized other benefits of life insurance besides replacing income and paying off debt.
Financial Planners – Put Money Tree Software’s life insurance needs calculations to good use by helping to resolve the issue shown in this graphic! 54% of parents and 74% of non-parents surveyed never calculated their life insurance needs.
Money Tree Software’s Silver Financial Planner and Easy Money both include life insurance needs analyses to help planners cover this important part of financial planning. Planners can complete the insurance analysis as part of a complete financial planning report, or as an independent analysis.
Silver Financial Planner estimates suggested additional life insurance coverage quickly and easily. Thanks to the streamlined data input, you can even use Silver as a conversational tool to discuss a client’s life insurance coverage by opening the program, working through the inputs with the client, and viewing the immediate results together. View a sample of the life insurance analysis reports in Silver.
Easy Money provides a detailed insurance analysis, looking at not only the current life insurance need, but also how that need changes each year in the future. View a sample of the life insurance analysis reports in Easy Money.
