Met Life External Conversion Program!

Last week I talked about a case with Met Life where a person was able to use the met-life-external-conversion program in order to convert to a policy that had an accelerated benefit rider. Their company didn’t have the benefit and the person was terminally ill so it was a home run for his family.

With the shifting landscape since the beginning of the year around term insurance and universal life with external no lapse guarantees, Met Life’s program may become a big player. In March Protective Life announced that they were no longer going to allow conversions to their very competitive no lapse UL. In its’ place they now allow conversion to a more traditional UL that doesn’t have the advantages or pricing of the more competitive product.

While the story above is a very poignant one, it is also going to be a rare case since most life insurance companies have policies that have the accelerated benefit riders. But more common will be cases where people want to convert some portion of their policy and they run into an option that frankly stinks, like the North American Life conversion option now.

It will also open up possibilities for those who want to convert but currently have their term insurance with companies that only allow conversion to whole life. Given the ability to convert to a fully guaranteed universal life can save huge amounts of money compared to converting to whole life.

Bottom line. This is a good program with plenty of valuable uses. We’ll keep you posted of any changes, but for now I wouldn’t recommend a conversion until a person checks to see what Met has to offer first.