Life insurance has traditionally been sold and serviced by a traditional life insurance agent. Over the last few years, this has changed. There are very few traditional life insurance agents who only sell life insurance and other related insurance products. Almost all are now called by such descriptions as financial advisors, financial consultants, and financial planners. The advisors who traditionally had those titles have now expanded more significantly into life insurance. CPAs, also, are now in the life insurance sales business. It has become very difficult to evaluate a life insurance advisor. As with any area, receiving good advice is crucial. The following are some issues to keep in mind.

The agent system has also changed – historically, almost all agents were “captive.” This means that they only sold products for the company with which they were affiliated. While there are still quite a few “captive agents,” today the majority are brokers who represent multiple carriers. Some “captive” agents are able to also sell the products of other companies and some are not. This is important to find out and be aware of. An advisor should represent multiple companies. If they only represent one company they can only offer you that company’s products — not necessarily the best products in the marketplace. If your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail. This is one more reason for you to shop around.

Use an Advisor Referral Service, though most will provide less than optimal results. The following two services are a good place to start:

1. Society of Financial Service Professional’s referral service (SFSP). This organization started off as an alumni organization for CLUs and ChFCs and has since expanded to include many of the financial service professionals. (Again, these other professional’s may be highly qualified in their specific niche and not know much about life insurance.)  This service can be found on their web site at http://www.financialpro.org/ Consumer/find.cfm.

2. The Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education is an excellent organization that provides a wide variety of useful information on their web site at www.lifehappens.org. Their web site offers an online “agent locator” tool. However, it is a database of members of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA), which does not have the more stringent standards of the SFSP. Prior to using their agent locator service, you may want to check out the NAIFA web site to learn more about their members at www.naifa.org.