How to reel in (and keep) that really big insurance client

Most insurance agents dream of landing a BIG case, the high-net-worth client who represents a ticket into the big leagues.

The big leagues of insurance, that is – a place of greater responsibility, more trust, and bigger compensation checks. Chris Gandy is there.

In 1999, Gandy started his own financial services practice and, since then, has traveled the country working with business owners, physicians, professional athletes and key executives. Based in Chicago, he specifically focuses on life insurance, disability income insurance, investments, and tax reduction strategies.

Gandy plans to talk plenty about tax strategies during his session at the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors' Apex Conference in Phoenix. The session is titled, "How to Generate Your First $100K Case."

"I'm going to give them a couple of techniques of how to go about it and what those cases actually look like," Gandy said. "We're going to talk about an estate case, we're going to talk about a infinite banking case, and we're also going to talk about a defined benefit case."

The infinite banking concept is a strategy  – developed by economist Nelson Nash in the 1980s – that allows people to use a life insurance policy to create a private banking system and borrow against its cash value.

Agents need to show that kind of knowledge and creativity to become experts in the high-net-worth world, Gandy explained.

Gandy is a former basketball star for the University of Illinois who played professional basketball for the Chicago Bulls, San Antonio Spurs, and in L’Hermaine, France. He founded Midwest Legacy Group in 2010 and works with many of the major insurance carriers and investment providers.

Gandy will share his own successes with big cases, including an early $700,000 case that "I just kind of stumbled into really," he said modestly.

Getting a big case is just half of the climb up the mountain, Gandy noted. Keeping that client for life is the second part, and something he will cover in the session.

From the front pages

The session will also touch on some of the life insurance and estate planning issues in the political sphere. Such as the estate tax, which will be in the news next year. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 increased the lifetime estate tax exemption amount from $5.6 million to $11.18 million per individual, indexed for inflation.

Any assets passed above the exemption amount are subject to a 40% transfer tax. The exemption is slated to sunset at the end of 2025.

Private placement life insurance, or PPLI, is another tool familiar to Gandy. And it is under fire in the hall of the U.S. Senate. Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released a report in February on the use of PPLI by “ultra-wealthy” investors.

The report, which characterizes PPLI as a “buy, borrow, die” tax shelter, is highly critical of the uses and tax advantages afforded to the purchasers of such products that are not available to the less affluent. Wyden is reportedly planning to introduce legislation to curb the use of PPLI as a means of tax avoidance for the wealthy.

"The problem is PPLI has been oversold. It's not for everybody," Gandy said, "but it's pitched to everybody. It's a very complex platform and product. It's a unique product. And it fits like the 1% of the uber-high-net worth individuals, but people are doing it at $50,000 or $10,000 a year or something. That just doesn't make sense."

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