As a child, I was always threatened by Christmas. Santa is described by these frightening lines in the Christmas song:
He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness’ sake!
And the moral? “So! You better watch out!”
Over my career in financial services, I often wondered if I were in fact doing “good for goodness’ sake.” Or, to be honest, doing good for my good. For mere personal gain. To receive acclamation.
Ethics in Financial Services
A sound measure of goodness is ethics.
In 2014 the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and Securities Commission of Malaysia (SC) announced the formation of the Financial Services Professional Board (FSPB). The objective of the FSPB was to “drive the development and harmonization of professional standards across the banking and insurance industry, Islamic finance and capital markets, working closely with regulators and the professional bodies within the financial services sector.”1
The financial services industry plays a central role in any economy. This is why, in 2018, the FSPB established the Professional Code for the International Financial Services Industry; basically, a shared commitment to a common set of values, designed to engender trust in the financial industry.
On May 24, 2018, Ms. Jessica Chew Cheng Lian, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), gave the Welcome Address at the convention where the new FSPB Professional Code was launched. In her remarks she said:
“There is an acknowledgement that behavior is ultimately regulated by something that runs deeper than rulebooks. It is not an easy thing to put your finger on. Regulators have talked about ‘the way things get done’ in an institution, or ‘the human element in everyday decisions.’ We like to think of it as how one behaves when no one is watching.”2
Everyone, that is, including Santa.
Trust Is Rooted in Ethics
Here are the five principles contained in the Code of Ethics for The Financial Services Industry:
- Principle 1: Competence “Individuals across the financial services industry shall develop and maintain the relevant knowledge, skills and behavior to ensure that their activities are conducted professionally and proficiently. This includes acting with diligence, as well as obtaining, and regularly updating, the appropriate qualifications, training, expertise, and practical experience.”3
- Principle 2: Integrity “Organizations and individuals acrossthe financial services industry shall be honest and open in all their dealings. This includes behaving in an accountable and trustworthy manner, and avoiding any acts that might damage the reputation of, or bring discredit to, the industry at any time.”4
- Principle 3: Fairness “Organizations and individuals across the financial services industry shall act responsibly and embrace a culture of fairness and transparency. This includes treating those with whom they have professional relationships with respect and ensuring that they consider the impact of their decisions and actions towards all stakeholders.”5
- Principle 4: Confidentiality “Organizations and individuals across the financial services industry shall protect the confidentiality and sensitivity of information provided to them. This includes using it for its intended purposes only and not divulging information to any unauthorized persons, including third parties, without the necessary consent from those involved unless disclosure is required by law or regulation.”6
- Principle 5: Objectivity “Organizations and individuals across the financial services industry shall not allow any conflict of interest, bias, or undue influence of others to override their business and professional judgment. They shall declare, to those concerned, all matters that could impair their objectivity.”7
This is a good list. Santa would be pleased if all of us in the financial services industry, especially independent distribution, acted accordingly.
Point: In independent distribution we need to act ethically in order to strengthen the trust others place in us.
More than Ethics
On April 14, 1939, John Steinbeck published his novel The Grapes of Wrath. It had staggering success. Steinbeck wrote the 619-page novel in longhand, in a mere five months. His wife, Carol, prepared the typed manuscript. The book sold over 400,000 copies in its first year of publication. In its review, The New York Times wrote, The Grapes of Wrath is “a magnificent novel of America.” Because of the novel’s success and influence, Steinbeck received the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1940.
Back then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column, entitled “‘My Day,” which ran six days a week. In her column she wrote: “Now I must tell you that I have just finished a book which is an unforgettable experience in reading. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck both repels and attracts you. The horrors of the picture, so well-drawn, make you dread sometimes to begin the next chapter, and yet you cannot lay the book down or even skip a page.”8
In fact, the First Lady traveled to California to see for herself the living conditions at the labor camps that Steinbeck described. The Grapes of Wrath, and Ms. Roosevelt’s support, led to Congressional hearings about labor law reforms and wage regulation.
Steinbeck’s wife Carol not only typed the novel, but she also suggested the title. The Grapes of Wrath comes from the opening lines of Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic, published in 1862:
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.”
Ms. Howe and her husband visited Washington, D.C. in November 1861. While there, Howe heard Union troops singing a marching song called John Brown’s Body, a song that glorified the abolitionist John Brown, a man who was convicted and hanged for murdering a family of planters, and for killing a group of U.S. Army soldiers at Harpers Ferry.
While Howe and her husband were both strong anti-slavery activists, there was something distasteful about heartily praising a murderer in song.
Howe wrote the new lyrics to the same tune the very next day. She took dead aim at slavery. One verse of the hymn includes the words “let us die to make men free.” This is a call to fight to end slavery.
After she had written the lyrics, Howe wrote in her diary that “something of importance” just took place. In fact, her poem and the popular tune became an important part of American culture. Battle Hymn of the Republic was sung at the funerals of Winston Churchill, Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. In 1963 Judy Garland sang it on national television in honor of John F. Kennedy. More recently, it was performed at the memorial services for the victims of 9/11 and at President Obama’s second Inaugural Address.
Point: Today we easily embrace ethical behavior, and we all roundly agree with ending slavery. Santa, again, would be pleased.
Grace that Runs Deeper than Rulebooks
But wait.
One might ask why Carol Steinbeck chose Battle Hymn of the Republic as the source of her husband’s book title.
Carol Steinbeck chose Battle Hymn of the Republic as the source of the title for her husband’s novel because, like Howe’s lyrics, The Grapes of Wrath tackles a huge social ill—the maltreatment of immigrants and the poor.
In the 1930’s, the Dust Bowl created intolerable living conditions for over a million people living in the Central Plains who migrated west to find work and establish life in places like California’s Central Valley. For many, the only choice they had was to leave, and they found themselves on Route 66 headed to California.
Once these throngs of impoverished people arrived, tensions ran hot between the migrant population and the established merchants, landowners, and middle class of the western states. There is a huge divide between ownership and aspiration.
Steinbeck: “The quality of owning freezes you forever in ‘I,’ and cuts you off forever from the ‘we.’”9
Greed and generosity are competing forces in the novel. Steinbeck portrays self-interest and altruism as equal and opposite powers. The rich are depicted as greedy, and the poor are presented as generous. The landowners and businessmen are blamed for upholding a system that keeps the poor families in poverty. The people in power kept prices controlled in order to increase profits. The employers created extreme competition for good-paying jobs in order to keep wages low.
The majority of people already living in the western states felt fear and anxiety as these hordes of people came looking for assistance and opportunities.
Every now and then Steinbeck describes the acts of kindness offered by ordinary people seeing the needs of others and feeling empathy. Acts of grace.
Point: There is something beyond ethical behavior. It is called grace.
There is an unfamiliar line in Battle Hymn of the Republic which states that to the extent that you fight slavery and its proponents, “so with you My grace shall deal.”
Independent Distribution and Immigration
In the United States we all see the spiraling immigration problem. Countless people are streaming across our borders. It will require the strength and wisdom of political leaders and other decision-makers to resolve the myriad issues involved with immigration. It is massively beyond anything we can address here.
However, the reality cannot be escaped that millions of migrating people are living within our borders, and they, like Steinbeck’s “Okies,” have traveled hard roads and are seeking to find work, settle into communities, and raise families. They are a challenge wherever they settle, but tensions, anxieties and fear ought not to preclude independent life insurance distribution from addressing the needs for our products that these newcomers have.
Let’s return to the words of Ms. Jessica Chew Cheng Lian.
- Something that runs deeper than rulebooks
- Something not easy to put your finger on
- The human element in everyday decisions
Deeper than Rulebooks
According to the ACLI: “Life insurers provide jobs, protect American families, and invest in the economy. 90 million American families count on life insurers’ products for protection, long term savings, and a guarantee of lifetime income when it’s time to retire. Given today’s economic uncertainties, the financial and retirement security these products provide has never been more important.”10
In 2022 Forbes Advisor conducted a survey on life insurance.11 It includes some interesting findings:
- Fewer than half of people without life insurance surveyed in this study say they feel financially secure.
- 44 percent of American households would encounter significant financial difficulties within half a year if they lost the primary wage earner in the family, and 28 percent would reach this point in only a month.
- 106 million American documented and naturalized adults do not believe they have adequate life insurance coverage, according to the 2022 Insurance Barometer Study conducted by LIMRA and Life Happens.12
Imagine what the statistics would be for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. They also have to worry about taking care of their families after their deaths.
Immigrants have the same needs for life insurance as U.S. citizens:
- Income replacement
- College funding for dependents
- Debt cancellation
(Note: Purchasing life insurance is not illegal for an undocumented immigrant.)
Point: Undocumented persons are as much in need, if not more so, for the products offered by the life insurance industry.
Something Not Easy to Put Your Finger On
But can they actually acquire coverage? Are they excluded by the rulebooks?
Without proper paperwork and documentation, just about everything an undocumented immigrant does in the United States will be more difficult.
Life insurance offers many benefits to immigrant policy owners and their beneficiaries regardless of their citizen status. Life insurance rates are not impacted by immigration status. However, finding life insurance is not easy for people who are not U.S. citizens. Citizenship status will influence which life insurance companies will be able to provide coverage and what further information is required to acquire a policy.
Undocumented immigrants living in the United States do not have Social Security numbers. They do not have U.S. citizenship. How, then, can they apply for life insurance?
(Note: People entering the United States illegally, with no documentation whatsoever, are not able to get life insurance.)
Undocumented immigrants can use a tax identification number (ITIN) to apply for life insurance policies. (With numerous carriers.) An ITIN is issued by the IRS. With it, immigrants can open a bank account, file taxes, and purchase life insurance. An ITIN is not contingent upon citizenship, and life insurance companies normally do not ask any questions about a proposed insured’s immigration status. The ITIN is not an indication that a person is an undocumented immigrant. Many foreign nationals and other legal, non-U.S. residents utilize an ITIN. Using their ITINs, life insurance companies will search the immigrant’s medical history and review their background for criminal activity.
These are extremely useful documents for immigrants applying for life insurance:
- A valid driver’s license
- Documentation of the last-seen doctor visit
- Employment history and paycheck records
- A current, valid passport from the home country
- Other requirements:
- Must reside in the United States and provide an address
- Have a U.S. bank account
Life insurance company underwriters consider and approve undocumented immigrants based on:
- MIB
- Driving records
- Prescription drug history
- Health history
- Working status
- Lifestyle situations such as credit history
- Insurable need
While Federal law protects life insurance beneficiaries, and undocumented immigrants can receive death benefits from life insurance policies regardless of immigration status, certain government agencies may intervene due to immigration status.
Point: With special attention given to non-citizen status, immigrant persons can qualify for life insurance policies with some documentation.
The Human Element in Everyday Decisions
Undocumented immigrants are especially at risk if a spouse or partner dies unexpectedly. Typically, very few extended family members live nearby to help the deceased’s immediate family.
In addition, because they are just getting started in the United States, they generally do not have adequate financial reserves should an emergency happen.
Most immigrants are willing and able to pay one or two dollars per day for life insurance to help their surviving family and loved ones should they die. Life insurance is an important financial safety net for both U.S. citizens and immigrants to the United States.
Question: As an independent financial professional, are you open to helping people (who are technically illegal immigrants) in their pursuit to provide their families and loved ones with financial security through life insurance?
Application:
- How can you broaden your activities and offerings to attract and serve the immigrant population?
- Are your services discoverable by immigrant people living within your same geographic area?
- Are you willing to expand your marketing to cross language barriers and socio-economic differences?
- How can you enhance your networks by working cooperatively with agencies serving immigrants, with English as a second language services, and other organizations aligned with the concern for the present and future of these recently arrived families?
- What can you do to tailor your processes so that you serve this imperiled population?
Summary
Even children who came across America’s southern border illegally hope for Santa to find them. Santa is no respecter of borders. Nor does he inspect citizenship documentation.
Can we as an industry rise above politics, cross cultural barriers, and do what only we can do—provide financial security needed to anticipate the unexpected occurrences of death and disability?
Steinbeck: “Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”13
With grace as our motivation, let us walk up the stairs of the concepts that make our industry great!
Footnotes:
- https://www.bnm.gov.my/-/announcement-on-the-formation-of-the-financial-services-professional-board-and-the-appointment-of-its-chairman-and-board-members.
- https://www.bis.org/review/r180613c.htm.
- https://www.maybank.com/iwov-resources/corporate_new/document/my/en/pdf/FSPB_Code_of_Ethics_PartA_B.pdf.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2020/ten-things-you-might-not-know-about-grapes-wrath.
- “The Grapes of Wrath.” John Steinbeck, The Viking Press-James Lloyd, April 14, 1939.
- https://www.acli.com/About-ACLI/Learn-More-About-the-Life-Insurance-Industry.
- https://www.forbes.com/advisor/life-insurance/life-insurance-statistics/.
- Life Happens: 2022 Insurance Barometer Study.
- “The Grapes of Wrath.” John Steinbeck, The Viking Press-James Lloyd, April 14, 1939.
In A Word
I recently spent three weeks in Poland doing what I feel called to do these days. I traveled with two teammates named Rich and Joan (a delightful married couple). We conducted three nightly seminars each week on the subject of Emotional Intelligence. Our audience was comprised of university students from multiple universities in three different cities. We spent the daytime hours meeting with individual students for mentoring. Our purpose in traveling to other countries is to use what God has given us (our experience, training, wisdom from our lives and careers) to encourage university students to use what God has given them, so they can, in turn, make a positive impact on other people.
We started in Poznan, ended in Warsaw, and in the middle week, found ourselves in Krakow. There we stayed in a boutique hotel named “Amber.” At the front desk we received a guide meant to help us pronounce Polish phrases that we may want to use in our encounters with native speakers.
Sadly, we did not find the guide to be all that useful. Consider the examples shown in Table 1.
We had nothing. Our tongues and lips locked up like we had mouthfuls of peanut butter.
The guide is intended to address the needs of a traveler, someone who does not speak the language. The guide is designed to somehow help travelers use a few expressions to better navigate their unusual surroundings. It is not altogether successful.
This experience caused me to reflect on the language we use in independent distribution and financial services, and in life insurance specifically. The people we serve are often experiencing traumatic changes and stressful financial fluctuations. How well does our lexicon meet their needs?
Point: At a time when the industry is marketing complex products with opaque and technical features, it behooves the independent financial professional to use great care to use the right words in all communications.
Where there is ambiguity, or when the information is stated in terms that people generally do not use, the opportunity for misunderstanding increases. For example, today’s indexed universal life policies are steeped in words, phrases, and terms that individually confuse the reader and, when considered in combination, utterly baffle the mind.
This hard-to-understand terminology invites distrust. This opens the door to commentaries and articles stating such things as, “Critics say indexed universal life insurance is being sold dishonestly.”1
Life insurance at its very core comes to life when people come to the end of theirs. The good of life insurance enters into grief.
Question: In the life insurance industry, are we providing clear guidance, sharing useful, understandable words, and giving people the ability to navigate the strange world of grief?
Grief
The writer C.S. Lewis (born November 29, 1898; died November 22, 1963) spent most of his adult life as a bachelor. In 1956 he married an American writer named Joy Davidman. Tragically, she died of cancer four years later at the age of 45. Lewis, a deeply respected thinker, philosopher, theologian, and author of nearly three dozen books, found himself without words, without answers.
To help himself sort out the confusion of emotions, doubts, and lost direction, he kept a journal that became a book entitled, “A Grief Observed.”
Here is how the book begins:
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”2
Point: When a life insurance death benefit is paid, the money slides in under an invisible blanket separating the deceased’s family from the world. The death proceeds land in the world of grief.
Personal Pain of Grief
Lewis died one week before his 65th birthday. My own father died one week before his 67th birthday.
It was a little after 8:00 AM on Monday, November 15, 1993, and I was sitting in a conference room with all the other executives of Manhattan National Life. We were about to begin an all-day planning session to choose our strategies for 1994. My assistant, Becky, opened the door, apologized for interrupting, and came to me and whispered in my ear, “Dave, Di is on the phone. You need to take her call.”
My wife let me know that my Dad had unexpectedly died overnight. I informed my colleagues and headed home from downtown Cincinnati. I went directly to Spring Grove Cemetery. Designated as a National Historic Landmark, Spring Grove is very much like a park with over 700 acres of trees and flowers. There among the headstones I wept like never before. Every one of those graves held the remains of people who left grieving loved ones behind. I was not experiencing anything new. But it was new to me.
Lewis: “The death of a beloved is an amputation.”3
My Dad died whole in all his relationships. He and I knew we loved one another and there was nothing that needed to be said or forgiven. Yet, suddenly, the familial appendage known as “Dad” was gone from this world, from my life.
In A Word
Those of us in the life insurance industry should pay attention to the words we use to describe our products and our processes.
Consider the following examples:
Beneficiary
It is easy to find a dictionary definition or legal description of this word.
A beneficiary is a natural person or other legal entity who receives money or other benefits from a benefactor. A beneficiary is the person or entity chosen by the deceased to receive the benefits from the decedent’s life insurance coverage.
Beyond its definition, we have the opportunity to incorporate the truer essence of the word in our usage.
To be a beneficiary, then, is to be lovingly selected, and generously designated to receive valuable benefits. A beneficiary is the target of the intentions and affections of the deceased.
Point: Every independent financial professional should take great care in explaining the beautiful essence of the relationship between the policyholder and the beneficiary.
Claims
The word “claim” has many different uses. It can refer to property, to rights, or to something set aside for another. Alternatively, a claim can take on a negative connotation and mean “an assertion,” or even “allegation.” Independent financial professionals can help grieving families by stating the word “claim” in the positive sense of seeking what is due or securing a privilege or what is rightfully theirs.
“The loss of a loved one is devastating, and the life insurance claim process may only add to that feeling of grief and finality. But try to take solace in knowing that your departed loved one had a life insurance policy to help you during this difficult time.”4
Beyond the Words
Not only do life insurance products achieve their purpose when an insured dies, the independent financial professional can also.
Because life insurance companies are not tracking every insured to see if they are still living, the deceased’s family or surviving business partners must notify the company when the policyholder dies. The process is called filing a claim. And the assistance of an independent financial professional can prove invaluable.
It all begins with two key steps:
Researching Policies
Occasionally people own life insurance policies but their own families are not made aware of their existence. Or, if they are, they cannot find the policies or any information. If the family or surviving business partners believe such life insurance policies existed, but do not know which companies issued the coverage, a seasoned independent financial professional knows that the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has created a Life Insurance Policy Locator.
The NAIC Life Policy Locator can assist consumers in locating life insurance policies and annuity contracts of a deceased family member or close relationship.
The Web Site is: https://eapps.naic.org/life-policy-locator/#/welcome.
The member companies will search their records to determine whether they have life policies or annuity contracts owned by the deceased. If found, these companies will contact the surviving family or business partners but only if they are the designated beneficiary or authorized legal representative.
Here are other ways that helpful independent financial professionals can guide the surviving family/business partners in their search for policies:
Note: If you are an independent financial professional, remind all your clients who own life insurance to let their beneficiaries know that the life insurance policies exist. Otherwise, the beneficiaries won’t know they’re owed a death benefit. They will not know the loving intentions behind the policies.
Retrieving Death Certificates
A certified death certificate is needed to file a life insurance claim. A surviving family member or business partner can usually get a certified death certificate from a state/local health department. Many other financial institutions will also request certified death certificates.
To the family left behind, the death certificate is something that makes the loss very real and, suddenly, official.
I remember a financial advisor telling me that my own mother’s death certificate was actually a Certificate of Merit indicating that she had lived well and successfully passed through this world and was on her way to the next (and better) world.
Submitting the Claim
In addition to the death certificate, the deceased’s family will need other information, including:
All this will be submitted to the life insurance company that will review the claim.
Again, these can be viewed as the following:
Summary
It is a privilege to develop and distribute financial products that translate good intentions into concrete acts of love. The financial services industry, and the life insurance industry in particular, facilitate the fulfillment of dreams that continue after we are gone.
Life Happens describes it this way: “The main reason to buy life insurance is because you love people and want to protect them financially.”5
Helping people purchase life insurance is an honorable mission. It is, however, only half-way to completion. Being there, serving the surviving family members and business partners, entering into their world of grief—that is the second half, and perhaps most important phase, of the mission.
The point of this article is simply to remind those of us involved in this meaningful industry that we need to take great care to use the right words when the promise of life insurance is fulfilled.
C.S. Lewis was torn on whether or not he wanted people to speak to him in his time of grief. “I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate if they do, and if they don’t.”6
In our business, we must show up, and we must be prepared to say the right things.
Footnotes: