Filling a Void in Society, Maelynn Marie, An Opportunistic Attitude
"If you never try, you'll never know. You are what you manifest."
Good morning, I woke to a beautiful sunrise. I think they get better every day. I have made some coffee, intense, dark, and rich. I am in my magical purple bean bag, and the fireplace is keeping me toasty on this chilly morning. Join me while I whip up some morning soup.
Two years ago, we approached one of our insurance carriers about doing virtual enrollments for one of their products. The product is a guaranteed life insurance product that is a gift from employers to their employees. After a lot of discussions, nothing moved forward; we gave up, the timing was not right.
First, a little about the program: it is a payroll deduct life insurance program; it is a guarantee issue product and is portable if the employee changes jobs. If you think about most working people, they fail to plan for death. Most people that need life insurance do not have life insurance. Our goal is to cover the uncovered and give families financial assistance after a time of loss. We have a few stories of employees that died suddenly or had a spouse die, and our program was the only life insurance they had purchased.
The program is flexible, inexpensive, think pizza money per paycheck, but you can buy up to $100,000 of life insurance for yourself or other family members. Keep in mind, the product is guaranteed issue, so if an employer has employees with health issues, this might be the only way they can get life insurance.
We have been selling this product for years, just added a team member to lead this division, and we think this is an area of growth in the coming years. Now, more than ever, life insurance is a critical tool to keep a family financially stable after a horrific event. The traditional process we have been using was our lead agent would meet with the business owner, review the program, the owner would give us the green light. Next, we would have an employee meeting and then meet one on one with each employee. Employees can opt-in or opt-out; the enrollment meeting can take as little as 5 minutes or as much as 30 minutes. The application process is simple and is done via a fillable pdf. All applications are DocuSigned; it is a pretty smooth process.
Fast forward to the present day. Our carrier reached out to us and asked if we might want to pilot a virtual enrollment program using our agency as a test. We are the first in the nation to get this opportunity; they wanted to see how the virtual enrollment would work before rolling out to their other agents. In the last two days, our lead agent has been working with a couple of company people meeting with our team virtually (all team members are working from home) and enrolling them or allowing an opt-out of the program.
My Queen and I are well insured, we have an estate plan, but life insurance is a changing and evolving need. I met with our agent and a friend that works with the carrier, and I bought a $50,000 whole life policy on myself and named my two kid's beneficiaries. I also purchased a whole life policy on my granddaughter, Maelynn Marie, aka M and M. The cost was minimal, it's money I won't miss. But in the event, something happens to me; my kids will have a nice bonus in addition to all the other life insurance we carry.
Maelynn will have a policy with cash values she can cash in or keep as a fully paid-up policy. It is a gift I will give to every grandkid I am blessed to be given from our children. There is also a rider attached to each policy that will pay if you become disabled or confined to a nursing home or health care facility for more than 60 days.
I was on a virtual call yesterday, and the young lady I was speaking to stated, "I see you write a lot, but you never write about what you do?" I said, "yeah, insurance is not a great topic to write about; that's not my audience." But I did tell her my thought was to share a little about this program. If you are a regular reader of my soup, apologies for the diversion into our business, I will return tomorrow with some happy, joyful, love riddled soup.
I am passionate about what we do and how we help our communities. This is another service we offer that few people understand, but it fills a void in society. I hope these words find you in a comfortable spot, a joyful presence, and an opportunistic mindset. The world is slowly returning to normal, do not waste this gift, embrace it, enjoy it, and be a good neighbor to others in need.
"If you never try, you'll never know. You are what you manifest."