Industry Insight: Life Insurance and Estate Planning

Protecting What Matters Most

With Life Insurance Awareness Month starting next week, it’s a great time to revisit how life insurance can fit into broader estate and legacy planning conversations.

For families, business owners, and high-net-worth clients, protecting a legacy may involve more than simply accumulating wealth. Estate liquidity, beneficiary fairness, business continuity, charitable giving, and long-term financial flexibility can all play a role.

Life insurance can provide a source of liquidity when it is needed most, helping families address expenses and obligations without necessarily requiring the sale of other assets. It can also support strategies such as beneficiary equalization, business succession, buy-sell planning, and charitable giving.

A Broader Planning Conversation

For business owners, life insurance may help provide funding for buy-sell agreements, key person protection, and succession planning.

For families with significant or illiquid assets, life insurance can help create liquidity for heirs while allowing assets such as real estate, businesses, or investment portfolios to remain intact.

And for clients with charitable goals, life insurance can be part of a broader strategy for balancing charitable giving with the desire to provide for family members.

Agent Takeaway: Life Insurance Awareness Month is an opportunity to look beyond the traditional life insurance conversation and ask clients how they want their assets protected, transferred, and used to support the people and causes that matter most.

Continue Your Learning

Mutual of Omaha is offering resources to help financial professionals strengthen these conversations, including:

• “The Basics of Estate Planning” Gateway training on September 9

• Previously recorded Advanced Markets Gateway training on estate planning and holistic retirement planning with life insurance

• A client-approved Estate Planning brochure for additional conversation ideas

Explore the available resources and use Life Insurance Awareness Month as an opportunity to start meaningful estate and legacy planning conversations with your clients.