In the Hole

Good news—especially if you own whole-life insurance.

In one of those little-noticed yet mildly seismic changes in the financial services industry, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners adopted an updated Commissioners Standard Ordinary Mortality Table, or CSO, back in 2002. Even though several years have passed, in our practice we see an inordinate number of people, mostly in their 50s and 60s, who still have life insurance contracts that were issued using the old 1980 table.

Those contracts carry much higher premiums because they assume a much lower life span. So review your life insurance contracts if you’ve had them a while. Using the updated 2002 table can give you the ability to buy a lot more insurance—which gives you a much higher death benefit—for the same premium.