Bridge the Gap Podcast Connecting Business Perspectives
Regina Wagner- Life Settlements
May 25, 2022Season 5Episode 16
Colton Cockerell & Trisha Stetzel
More about Regina Wagner
Regina Wagner is the Principal and Owner of Allthings Senior Consulting, LLC. She is passionate about educating seniors so they can make the best and most informed decisions.With over 26 years in the senior insurance space, she has seen a lot and wants to help people avoid making costly and unnecessary mistakes. Her 3 areas of specialty are Life Settlements, Long Term Care Planning, and Medicare.
Regina Wagner is the Principal and Owner of Allthings Senior Consulting, LLC. She is passionate about educating seniors so they can make the best and most informed decisions.With over 26 years in the senior insurance space, she has seen a lot and wants to help people avoid making costly and unnecessary mistakes. Her 3 areas of specialty are Life Settlements, Long Term Care Planning, and Medicare.
Hello and welcome to a another exciting episode of Bridge the Gap where we're balancing life through health, wealth, business and relationships. Alright, hello everyone and welcome to another exciting episode. My name is Colton Cockerell and I have my partner in crime with me on the show today, as always miss Trisha Stetzel Trisha, how are you doing? Hey
Trisha Stetzel:
guys, good Colton. I am so glad to be here. As a reminder to all of our listeners this month on the show, we're really focused on family and relationships. Today, we're going to be talking about life settlements. I know you're like, what exactly does that mean? Well, who better to talk about this topic? Then my friend Regina Wagner with all things senior consulting Regina, welcome to the show.
Regina Wagner:
Thank you so much, Tricia and Colton for having me here. It's my pleasure.
Colton Cockerell:
Absolutely energy. And before we get started, I want to two things. First, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor for this episode. And that is results extreme business solutions for all your business coaching needs. And second, Tricia, I would like for you just real quick. So I think it's so important to give a brief background on Regina. And just really where, why she's in the spot that she's in.
Trisha Stetzel:
Yeah, absolutely. Like I would give a testimonial for this beautiful woman any day of the week. And as we talk about I want everybody to keep in mind as we talk about these life settlements, where Regina is actually coming from she absolutely believes in life insurance policies. Her Why is just amazing around her parents and her siblings and what she's been through, and how life insurance a life insurance policy changed her life. And I think that's really important. As we talk through today, what in the world is a life settlement? And Regina, I'd like for you to just kind of dive in. And let's start with what in the world is a life settlement?
Regina Wagner:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for that introduction. Trisha. Everyone. Again, my name is Regina Wagner, I am a senior insurance specialist. And I have been in the insurance space for 26 years. Every time I say that, I think to myself, wait a minute, I don't feel older than 26. But I want to start by letting your audience know what a life settlement is. In short, a life settlement is the sale of the existing life insurance policy they have. And the sale for more than the cash value, but less than the death benefit. What it does is it give policy owners an opportunity to sell their policy for significantly more than the cash value offered by their existing carrier.
Trisha Stetzel:
So Regina, I'm sorry, Colton. I was just going to tack on to that. Why in the world? Would I want to sell my life insurance policy, Regina?
Regina Wagner:
Oh, my goodness. Let me start. I'm going to answer that question. But let me give you just a little bit of history. Okay, life insurance provides solutions for so many financial needs, right. And I've lost three siblings at young ages. I know what happens when a young person passes away unexpectedly. And they possess life insurance or they own it. And then I know what happens to a young person who passes unexpectedly and they don't have any. So you're not going to find a a, a more committed or advocate for life insurance than myself. But to go to answer your question, Trisha, people are going to the sale. Because the original need for the insurance has changed. Seniors today are living longer than their spouses. They're living longer than their adult children. And yes, they're living longer than their savings. So those are just some of the reasons that a person would sell. Think about term insurance. Term insurance, a person is having protection. In the event something bad happens that is going to protect their family, right. But it's a 10 year term, a 20 year term, a 30 year term. When that term expires, they've not met with a person like Colton to help them put plans in place, there's a good chance it's going to term and it's the price will significantly go up right. So you can go from paying $1,300 a year on a term to having a price of over 30,000 or $12,000 a year. So a policy can get to the point where it's unaffordable. Or maybe someone sold one of them Old universal life policies and it's not performing as projected. So there's a lot of reasons that it makes perfect sense to consider selling their policy.
Colton Cockerell:
And for our, for our listeners out there who are pretty versed with life insurance, is there a difference between a life settlement and a viatical? viatical? Yeah,
Regina Wagner:
yes, there is big differences, and so many, but the basic fundamental difference by articles came on the scene when individuals were diagnosed with a terminal illness, and so viaticals are specifically for a uninsured policy owner, that have been given a certain amount of time. And so the viatical started in that space. And the other thing that is, you know, I'm concerned with on some of them, there's a, there's a, it will fit a need for certain people. But the point on those is that a lot of them can be owned by an individual investor. And that's the concern for many people, whereas a life settlement, it's owned by institutional organization, so it's not going to be an individual that is going to have an interest in, in your death benefit.
Colton Cockerell:
Okay, and so with with the life and because I know you're going to get it, it's so funny hearing you talk about not funny, but Yeah, cuz I know how much you're so pro life insurance. So but it makes sense. I think so many people get caught up with the mindset of, hey, look, my kids are out of school, they're 30, 40, 50 years old, I My house is paid off. I don't necessarily need my life insurance right now. Especially if you're in a bind if something comes up and you need that you're strapped for cash, right? So I totally understand. And like you said, needs do change throughout your life. So So tell me kind of how does this work for a senior who is like, you know, what, I don't need life insurance anymore. But I need money for you know, long term care, whatever it may be, how does that work?
Regina Wagner:
Absolutely. In fact, you touched on something, and we'll come back to the top uses of the proceeds, right? But basically, it's really pretty simple. The policy will be appraised. If a person and I work with financial advisors, CPAs attorneys, anytime they've got clients that need liquidity, then I recommend that they call me so that they can get that policy appraised. You the the appraisal will will cover basics about the policy right? Is it a term? Is it a whole life? Is it a universal life? So there's some fundamental information that's gathered. Now let's just say after it goes through the appraisal period, that it qualifies for a cash offer? Well, the policy owner gets to make a decision. If they accept that cash offer. If they accept it, then there's going to be documents that need to be signed, similar to closing on your home when you sell your home. So there are going to be a legal documents, everything is recorded. All of that is very, very aboveboard. And so once they've decided that they will accept the cash offer, they go through what's kind of considered like a closing. And once everything is signed by the insured by beneficiaries, by the way, a lot of people don't know this with life settlement, you don't have to sell your entire policy, you can have a $2 million policy coltan and decide to keep a half a million of it for your spouse, or for your adult child or charity. And then you sell the other 1.5 million, a case study a couple of months ago, where an individual had a$2 million policy, they literally kept the half a million for their air, and they sold the other and they walked away with a check for $150,000. And they can do what they want. There are no strings attached to the use. In fact, you had touched on that about long term care. The top reasons for seniors needing liquidity, or long term care costs like in home care. We all know the majority of Americans would love to age in place at home. But sometimes they can't right. If they start having memory issues. They may have to go to a memory community and I don't know what region some of your listeners are coming from but in our region a memory care is 8000 to$12,000 a month. In that amazing so so that's long term care needs medical cost and treatment, sometimes there alternative treatment that's not covered by your insurance. There's financial planning and retirement Finding that people use the funds for, for example, a coach and I know you work with clients in this space. But what if they want to have a guaranteed income going to maybe a special needs child, they can do that, especially if they know their health is compromised, they can put something in place with a financial advisor that can set that loved one with a stream of income that they can't outlive. So those are just some things they might want to pay off debt payoff taxes, they may want to create liquidity for large purchases, like buying another business or buying a business. We're finding seniors are leaving the job market in numbers that we can barely get our head around. Because things are changing in corporate corporations. But seniors still have life in them, they still want to contribute to the community. So they may buy a business but realize you need$100,000 to buy that business. They may use the proceeds to travel, they may decide that they want to put a grandchild in college. So there's a lot of reasons they use the funds. And the most important thing I want your audience to know is that there are no strings attached. Once they accept the cash offer and a check is deposited in their bank, they can do whatever they want.
Trisha Stetzel:
Yeah, and Regina, you this really like stoke the fire in in my brain when you and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago, because I was not familiar with life settlements. And I felt like having you on the show, because we have so many listeners who either are already taking care of their senior parents or they will be taking care of a senior family member and knowing that there are options out there, no one's forcing a hand and saying you need to go sell your life insurance policy so that you have money. That's not it. It's about getting that appraisal and making the right decision for you and your family. And maybe being able to stay at home with that caregiver is the right decision. And I think that is so important. Here's the thing that I want you to tell us, my mathematician friend, you have some stats and some numbers about life insurance policies. Can you just throw those out there at our audience? Oh,
Regina Wagner:
when I gained certification and advanced studies, this is a statistic$700 billion in life insurance goes unclaimed or surrendered in a year. Think about that for a moment. $700 billion and 100 billion of that are seniors life insurance going unclaimed. So that's a pretty phenomenal number to think about you get your head around.
Colton Cockerell:
And let me let me ask you this since we do have limited time, because I'm very curious, how do you qualify for a life settlement? Because I think that's such an important thing to understand.
Regina Wagner:
That is easy. I mean, literally in one sentence. The qualifications are for insured over 65 living in the United States are younger than 65. If but have healthier implications. Something to think about is the cash offer gets higher, the closer or person's age is to life expectancy Colton Patricia. So again, the qualifications is just simply that simple and insured over 65 Are their younger withheld them implications.
Colton Cockerell:
And so then that's in that I'm assuming that's how term policies have and I'm saying this in air quotes have a cash value when it comes to left settlements. And that's basically their, their banking that the person is going to pass away before the term. Is that correct?
Regina Wagner:
Yes. There's a couple of things going on. Specifically, if we're referring to a term policy, remember, Tom policies have no cash value, right? Exactly. What generally happens is the financial advisor for that policy owner is going to help them convert that term into a permanent plan. Okay. And then again, based on that person's very specifics that give it value, how old that person is, how close are they to life expectancy, expectancy, that's going to dictate and determine the cash offer. So I was blown away, let me share something with you. I had no idea a person could sell a term policy, had no idea at all. So think about it if you're going to either surrender that policy because it's become unaffordable, or you no longer need it, or you can literally walk away with 10,000 20,000 50,000. The other thing on qualifications that I didn't mention is you have to have a policy face amount of$100,000. That's the minimum or you Beware over $12 million. That just to give you an idea of the qualifications, I want to share something I know we're coming to an end. But in my opinion, for those that are 65 and older, they absolutely should have their life insurance policies appraised, especially when there's a surrender or a lapse being considered.
Trisha Stetzel:
I think we you covered so much ground here. Regina, thank you so much for coming on the show with us today. What a really compelling topic, right and something that we should all be thinking about, especially if we have seniors in our lives that are potentially strapped for cash, or they've had a life chain right and something else could do them better.
Colton Cockerell:
So Regina, thank you so much for being on the show today. We really appreciate Avenue.
Regina Wagner:
You are very welcome. I just applaud Trisha you and Colton, for having this very important topic and having an open for discussion because people are looking for options and solutions and you guys are making this information available. I commend you,
Colton Cockerell:
for she is the sweetest.
Trisha Stetzel:
Right I know that's why we have her on the show. Regina, thank you so much for being with us today. For those of you who would like to reach out to Regina please check the comments below. All of her contact information will be there as well as in this show notes so that you can connect with her by phone, email, or even social media. And I invite all of you to tune in next week for another exciting episode of bridge the gap. And next month, we will again be focused on health and wellness.
Colton Cockerell:
Thanks again for tuning into this week's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with the most important people in your life. Colton Cockerell with Sharer McKinley Group, LLC is located at 820 South Friendswood Drive Suite 207 Friendswood, Texas 77546 phone number to 281-992-5698. Securities and investment advisory services offered through NEXT Financial Group, Inc. member FINRA/SIPC Sharer McKinley Group is not an affiliate of NEXT Financial Group, Inc.