An unconventional strategy for retirement, to maximize your life insurance policy is premium finance. Premium finance is where policyholders will pay substantial premiums via borrowing from a third-party lender—tying up the bank’s money versus your own capital. With some premium finance loans regular payments may begin shortly after the origination of the loan. However, there is a choice to capitalize interest into the arrangement with the expectation that the cash-value growth of the life insurance will outperform the accruing loan interest.

Premium financed life insurance allows the policyholder to purchase significantly more life insurance for a fraction of what is needed to support such a massive policy. This strategy keeps the policyholder’s other assets free to perform and produces an impressively tax-free internal rate of return for seemingly nothing out-of-pocket.

Ideally, the best method for premium financed life insurance polices is to create a compounding snowball effect for the cash value growth. The policy takes on the loan using built-in features. Moreover, it is when and if, the compounding cash value overcomes the hurdle of the premium finance loan’s interest rate. Future policy distributions may become death benefits to heirs, be tax-exempt retirement income, or possibly both.

How does premium financing work?

An affluent or emerging affluent individual with generally good health and a reputable credit rating may apply for a life insurance policy—be it for estate planning or retirement planning. For premium financing to occur, most of these policies will be whole life insurance or indexed-universal due to their stability and ability to offer higher loan-to-value ratio. With strong, long-term performance, the financed insurance policy will be funded at a maximum premium allowance for the first 4-7 years.

Depending on the situation, sometimes the borrower will pay the first premium themselves to avoid the need to post collateral. Often borrowers will involve a 3rd party lender to the larger premiums with the intent to begin interest-only payments directly to the lender. However, to fully capitalize on premium financing, borrowers roll the accruing interest into the loan with the high hopes the cash growth will outdo the finance loan.

This goes to say, the policyholder should prepare for posting collateral. If designed correctly, the life insurance can serve as the collateral due to its cash value growth.

Benefits to Premium Financed Life Insurance Policies:

  1. Ability to keep other assets active and growing.
  2. Replaces need to pay insurance premiums during your high-income working years.
  3. Potential for extremely positive arbitrage between cash value growth and premium finance loan rate.
  4. Potential of tax-exempt retirement income or greater death benefit payout.
  5. More cash value that compounds for you, not against you.

For more information on premium finance benefits and qualifications, listen to The Retirement Risk Show’s “Premium Finance: A Leveraging Method of Life Insurance” episode.