Will my family be okay if I pass away? This is a common question your clients may ask and hope to review to see how it could impact their financial plan.
Today we’ll review how you can address this question by utilizing a premature death What-if scenario and the Life Insurance set of eMoney reports.
Create a What-If
Before you begin presenting with Life Insurance reports, create a premature death What-if. To learn more, check out Planning for Unexpected Events with What-Ifs. This post and webinar recording will walk you through where to access and edit your What-ifs and how to utilize them when presenting to clients.
Now you’re ready to apply the What-if to reports. To access, go to Reports > All Reports > Life Insurance. Here, you’ll see a list of report options across the top of the reports page.
Let’s target some of the life insurance-related questions you may encounter and the accompanying reports that will satisfy your client’s inquiries.
How would a premature death impact my family’s expenses? And how do those expenses compare to our assets?
Start by reviewing your client’s expenses and resources with the Survivor Costs and Costs vs. Resources reports. You can apply the premature death What-if to both reports.
- The Survivor Costs Report helps your clients understand the burden of everyday living expenses, ongoing liabilities, and other recurring costs that become the family’s responsibility. It provides a summary and detailed breakdown of these costs over the spouse’s remaining lifetime.
- The Costs vs. Resources Report expands on Survivor Costs by providing additional insight into how your client can use projected assets to cover the projected costs. Income sources can include anything from Social Security to existing insurance benefits.
Will I need additional life insurance?
Now that your client has a general understanding of the costs that could be incurred by the family if a death occurs, and resources available to offset those costs, it’s a good time to move on to the Gap Analysis report.
- The Life Insurance Gap Analysis Report analyzes the costs incurred by the surviving spouse and the resources available and calculates the additional life insurance need required. When using the Gap Analysis report there are a number of required intra-report settings needed to determine an accurate additional life insurance need. This report allows you to specify within the report itself whether you are solving for Asset Replacement or Remaining Assets.
- Asset Replacement solves for additional life insurance required to replace all assets the decedent would have earned in his or her lifetime. You can also choose to solve for a defined level of Remaining Assets.
- Remaining Assets solves for additional life insurance required to hit a desired asset level minimum at end of life for the surviving spouse.
- With this report you can also specify the Realization Model and Reinvestment Growth rate of the collected insurance assets. Be sure to fine-tune these settings in order to solve for the appropriate amount of required insurance.
Finish up by showing your client how the additional insurance impacts their Costs vs. Resources.
- The Cost vs. Resources with Insurance Report revisits the analysis of Costs vs. Resources but includes the additional insurance (we solved for) showing them how it has a profound impact on their family’s ability to survive and thrive in the client’s absence.
While there are numerous other reports available for Life Insurance, these four will provide a solid base on which to build.
Watch our What-if webinar recording (scroll to bottom) to see how you can use eMoney’s advanced planning and interactive planning tools to present a premature death and insurance need to your clients.
