A Great Looking Site!

Take a look at the website for Engaged Legacies --- it practically reeks of stratospheric levels of wealth.

Here's one of their cool graphics:

Here's a key question on their Contact Us page:

Do you have at least three (3) clients with assets over $5,000,000 or at least one (1) client with assets over $10,000,000? *

Free Calculators for Estate Planning Professionals

An article in the January 8, 2008 issue of Trusts and Estate magazine provides a good survey of some of the free resources available on the internet. 


Of particular note:

PhilantroCalc for the Web is free via Ashland University as well as other charitable organizations' websites. It includes calculators for charitable gift annuities, CLTs, CRATs and CRUTs.

72t on the Net offers a life expectancy calculator for all commonly used mortality tables, an elaborate compound interest calculator and calculators for both Roth eligibility and Roth conversion.

Assetstream provides an advanced calculator that computes the tax advantages of donating appreciated stock to charity, taking into account both federal and state income tax rates.

Am I crazy, or does this product sound like a clone of American General's Elite Global Index UL?

NG Indexed Universal Life - Global (ING IUL-Global) is an individual indexed universal life insurance product offering valuable death benefit protection and the opportunity for cash value accumulation through index crediting potential based, in part, on a portion of the performance of two out of three stock market indexes.

This powerful combination of features may help your clients: With valuable death benefit protection Finance their life insurance premium Retain and reward key executives in their business Supplement retirement income From the Agent-Only training guide:

• Upside potential with unique “hindsight” interest crediting strategy based upon a formula that uses a portion of the better-performing two out of three indexes
• 5-year look-back period to reduce volatility associated with year to year index changes
• 1% guaranteed minimum interest rate for Indexed Strategy

• 60% Participation rate (current as of 11/23/2009)
  • For each Block, the Participation Rate and Index Cap will be set on the Block Start Date and will not change during that Block.
  • Will never be less than the Guaranteed Minimum Participation Rate of 15%
• No Index Cap (current as of 11/23/2009)
  • Will never be less than the Guaranteed Minimum Index Cap of 100%

Industry players cooperating to hedge (or profit from?) longevity risks.

Founded by AXA, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Legal & General (Banner & Wm Penn), Pension Corporation, Prudential, RBS and Swiss Re.,  the Life & Longevity Markets Association claims:

For certain institutional investors, longevity represents a potentially attractive investment opportunity primarily because it is not correlated to non-life, credit and market risks.

The LLMA seeks to break down the barriers to market growth by supporting the development of consistent standards, methodologies and benchmarks, By helping to build a liquid trading market, the LLMA will aid the expansion of capacity to meet demand, ultimately bringing added security to the benefits of pension fund members.