Life Insurance Awareness Month is here. For this first Marketing Corner of September 2020, we thought it would be fun to take a break from the norm and share some strange, but true facts about life insurance.
Pampered Pet Policies
Most insurance carriers won’t allow you to directly name your cat or dog beneficiary. Because states generally consider pets to be property, you can use life insurance to fund a pet trust. This will make sure that your beloved animal lives out the remainder of its life in style. Since other family members (and even courts) may find this arrangement distasteful, a pet trust will need to be properly structured.
Trouble Helmsley, the Maltese dog recipient of $12 million from Leona Helmsley, famously had his inheritance reduced to a mere $2 million after the hotelier’s grandchildren contested.
The Apollo 11 Astronauts’ Unusual Life Insurance Policy
Certain occupations and hobbies can incur high-risk ratings or preclude life insurance coverage altogether. But what if your job is an astronaut and your mission is to go to the moon? This is what the astronauts of Apollo 11 faced. With prohibitively high coverage options, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins resorted to a creative solution—autographed “covers,” signed envelopes post-marked on significant days. In the event of their death, the astronauts knew their autographs would fetch a great sum.
The Largest Life Insurance Policy Ever
According to Guinness World Records, an anonymous, but “well-known,” Silicon Valley billionaire purchased the most valuable life policy ever in 2014. The coverage amount? $201 million. This doubles the previous record of $100 million set in 1990. The most valuable policy was unsurprisingly complex, involving 19 different insurance companies for the underwriting.
Unclaimed Benefits Amount
According to Consumer Reports in 2013, the amount of unclaimed life insurance benefits is “at least” $1 billion. How can this happen? There are a few reasons. For one, consumers may be unaware of their beneficiary status. Policy owners may have poor record keeping. Insurance companies recently got themselves into trouble by failing to be more proactive in seeking out beneficiaries once policyholders died.
Life Insurance Ownership and Marriage Rates
Comparing data from the U.S Census and the American Council of Life Insurers Factbook, Bankrate found that states with a higher marriage rate generally had a lower life insurance ratio and vice versa. As the article postulates, this could be because the states with the highest marriage rates also have the youngest median ages for marriage, and life insurance may not be a priority for young newlyweds. Southern states had high policies-to-population ratios, with Alabama topping the list for life insurance ownership.
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