Guarantees
The company generally will guarantee that the policy's cash values will increase regardless of the performance of the company or its experience with death claims (again compared to universal life insurance and variable universal life insurance which can increase the costs and decrease the cash values of the policy). The dividends can be taken in one of three ways. The policy owner can be given a cheque from the insurance company for the dividends, the dividends can be used to reduce the premium payment, or the dividends can be reinvested back into the policy to increase the death benefit and the cash value at a faster rate. When the dividends paid on a whole life policy are chosen by the policy owner to be reinvested back into the policy, the cash value can increase at a rather substantial rate depending on the performance of the company. The cash value will grow tax-deferred with compounding interest. Most whole life policies can be surrendered at anytime for the cash value amount, and income taxes will usually only be placed on the gains of the cash account that exceeds the total premium outlay. Thus, many are using whole life insurance policies as a retirement funding vehicle rather than for risk management.
Read more about this topic: Whole Life Insurance
Famous quotes containing the word guarantees:
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—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)