One of the least talked about highest impact services you can offer your clients is Beneficiary Planning – yet so few advisors offer these services.
Beneficiary Planning isn’t just talking about beneficiary designation on individual life insurance policies, but includes every asset! Retirement Accounts, Group Life Insurance provided by the Employer, Annuities, etc. – anything that requires you to post a beneficiary designation.
Of course, the ideal way for an individual or couple to handle this is to have a formal estate plan, preferably in a revocable living trust (with all of their assets titled in the name of the trust), but at least in a valid and up-to-date Will, and then to have all of these assets payable to the living trust or in some other consistent manner that makes sense and is efficient to carry out at death.
I suggest that all of you start by looking at your own individual situations. I’m willing to lay odds on the fact that very few of you will find that everything you own is set up the way you really want it to be, and that you need to bring many of your own beneficiary designations current with your current situation and desired dispositions at death.
Life is extremely fluid, and everyone’s family and business situation is constantly subject to change. It is essential, therefore, that everyone’s beneficiary designations on everything they own be kept current and up-to-date. As I said, I suggest you start with your own personal situation.
Then, to get 2011 off to a roaring start, systematically contact everyone you know – clients, friends, neighbors, your doctors and dentists, the professionals you deal with, the businesses you do business with, anyone you can think of – and offer them an absolutely invaluable service that nobody else has ever offered them: a through and impartial review of everything they own with a single purpose in mind, to make sure that everything will happen exactly as they wish when that ultimate last day of life arrives, be it tomorrow or many years down the road!
Ask your Brokerage Manager how you can roll-out a Beneficiary Review Program with your clients!
