We would love to hear from you. Click on the ‘Contact Us’ link to the right and choose your favorite way to reach-out!

wscdsdc

media/speaking contact

Jamie Johnson

business contact

Victoria Peterson

Contact Us

855.ask.wink

Close [x]
pattern

Industry News

Categories

  • Industry Articles (21,155)
  • Industry Conferences (2)
  • Industry Job Openings (35)
  • Moore on the Market (414)
  • Negative Media (144)
  • Positive Media (73)
  • Sheryl's Articles (800)
  • Wink's Articles (353)
  • Wink's Inside Story (274)
  • Wink's Press Releases (123)
  • Blog Archives

  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • August 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • November 2008
  • September 2008
  • May 2008
  • February 2008
  • August 2006
  • Why Life Agents Should Convene Family Meetings

    June 10, 2014 by Linda Koco

    TORONTO – It is common for financial professionals to have badly outdated wills, said Dr. Thomas William Deans in a presentation here at the 2014 Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) annual meeting. But what about the late Robert Kennedy, the U.S. Senator and former U.S. Attorney General who was assassinated in 1968?

    Kennedy was an attorney and he did have a will, said Deans, who is a family business succession planning expert. In addition, the will did name an executor. But the executor was none other than the late President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated five years earlier.

    “What I’d like to know is, who was advising Robert Kennedy?” said the president of Détente Financial Press, Orangeville, Ont., Canada.

    “Who was his insurance professional? Did this insurance professional ever recommend convening a family meeting? Did he request copies of the will over the course of planning and funding Robert Kennedy’s estate?”

    The story highlights the issues that Deans sees in today’s estate planning marketplace — namely, that roughly 125 million American and Canadian adults have no will, and that the intestacy (dying without a will) rate is roughly 50 percent. In addition, many others have wills that are sorely out of date.

    This is a well-known problem in insurance and financial circles, but it is one that Deans believes insurance advisors can help address— by nudging clients to hold regular family meetings about family wealth matters, including death. In the process, insurance professionals may uncover additional opportunities for insurance solutions, he indicated.

    Hold regular family meetings

    “If insurance professionals can facilitate family conversations about money and its ultimate transfer, if they can help more families discover their will to will, it follows that you can shine a brighter light on the importance of insuring the future financial success of the family,” he said.

    Writing a will should not be a solitary endeavor, Deans added. Rather, the drafting of a will should occur over time, “born from family conversation.” And the process should be about preparing heirs.

    “When this preparation is coordinated, facilitated and presented as essential to any intergenerational plan by an advisor, this is how and where trust is earned. And where there is trust, there is less preoccupation with cost.”

    If that discussion sounds a lot like what producers learn when getting their spurs in life insurance, the parallel was probably intentional.

    Deans drew the lines between the two fields directly. “Life insurance is about providing for those who matter most when you cannot,” he said. “The intent of a will is the same; it’s a document designed for the benefit of others….It is the very difficult and inaccessible nature of this subject that illuminates the rare and invaluable work that an exceptional insurance professional performs.”

    The big game hunters

    It is rare to find advisors who can convene family meetings, he allowed, and of those who do convene meetings, only a few do so with regularity. But such advisors do exist, he said. They are “the big game hunters” who “thrive on bringing order to family chaos.”

    In Europe, trusted advisors to multiple generations of the same family are sometimes called consigliere, Deans noted. These individuals have a symbiotic relationship with the family, in which “succession planning for the family facilitated by the advisor becomes succession planning for the advisor facilitated by the client.”

    He suggested that life insurance professionals can play a similar role in the families of their clients. “The work of an insurance professional is by its very nature intergenerational,” he explained. “It’s someone doing something in the present for consideration of others in the future.”

    It’s also a “calling,” he said. The calling is to help families “talk about death, to stare at death and to plan for death, and to use death instead of death using, abusing and dismantling families.”

    Only 30 percent of family businesses survive to the second generation, he pointed out, and only 3 percent survive to the third generation. In view of that, business owners who gift an operating business are not leaving gifts, he cautioned. Many times, they leave “ticking time bombs” to members of the next generation who have no interest in running the business successfully into the future or who lack the ability to do so.

    Suggestions

    For insurance professionals who want to use family meetings to support intergenerational solutions, Deans had a few suggestions.

    Begin by asking the right questions, he said. “Central to this process is an understanding that the correct answer is always in the room, and that advisors aren’t always called on to provide it, but rather to tease it out of their clients.”

    In addition, try rekindling the ancient penchant for storytelling, in this case about the family’s history. “Advisors who can do this and do it well will reframe what a will is and, in doing so, make it one of the most exciting documents you and they write together,” he said.

    Those who die intestate leave more questions than answers, he warned, noting that, in many cases, the frustration, anxiety and resentment left behind is not directed at those who have died. Rather, he said, it is directed at those who remain, “namely siblings, family and, increasingly, advisors who have made little effort to bring family to the table to talk, share and write wills.”

    Finally, be willing to help the family address the often culturally-taboo subject of money — in particular, about relinquishing control over wealth “by talking to beneficiaries and preparing them to receive money and possessions, knowing that these gifts will release potential, not destroy it.”

    Fully prepared heirs do not magically appear, Deans stressed. “They are the product of a deliberate process in which advisors play a crucial role.”

    , MBA, is a contributing editor to InsuranceNewsNet, specializing in life insurance, annuities and income planning. Linda may be reached at linda.koco@innfeedback.com.

    © Entire contents copyright 2014 by InsuranceNewsNet.com Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reprinted without the expressed written consent from InsuranceNewsNet.com.

    Originally Posted at InsuranceNewsNet on June 10, 2014 by Linda Koco.

    Categories: Industry Articles
    currency