When life insurance companies change rates or some features of their policies they always have a deadline for application submission to get the old rates or features.

Occasionally I get the feeling that clients may wonder if my advice to make a decision or get an application signed and returned is sales motivated or if the deadlines I am talking about are truly drop dead dates that don’t have any flexibility. I talked yesterday about West Coast Life’s just announced term insurance rate increase that will be effective June 15.

Today we received a notice of rules for the west-coast rate change. There is no ambiguity on paper applications. The decision has to be made and application signed by June 14. The signed application has to be in the home office by June 22. No exceptions.

Then I blew a cork as I read their Telelife rules. Telelife is not a route that I personally recommend for customers simply because I believe we lose a layer of expertise, but having said that, West Coast Life is giving a decided advantage to Telelife customers in that they only have to have been quoted through Telelife by June 15 and have two more months to actually perform an application. I’ve lodged a screaming bloody murder complaint with the home office and will post their response.

Having said that, the point is that when we, as agents, receive these notices, it is in our customer’s best interest that we do whatever we can to prompt them to action. One day late and you lose the rate. No exceptions.

Bottom line. We’ll be seeing a lot more of these increases over the next several months and when your agent tells you about it, it becomes a call to action that is all about your bottom line, not the agents. If they push to make sure you receive a lower rate, remember that being paid on commission they have just pushed to make less money for themselves.