Many of the attractions of today's life insurance policies are the features that provide benefits during the insured's life, as well as at death. These features are commonly and collectively known as a policy's "living benefits." The purpose of this course is to explore a common form of living benefit: accelerated death benefits, which provide advanced payment of some amount of a life insurance policy's death benefit in the event the insured meets certain qualifying conditions.

This course provides an in-depth look at the various types of accelerated death benefits, the primary methods insurers typically use to determine the amount of benefits payable, the important distinctions between riders that accelerate benefits for chronic illness and those that accelerate for qualified long-term care costs, the taxation of accelerated benefits, and the marketing and suitability considerations that apply to producers and insurers.

Upon completion, students should be able to:

• describe the types of accelerated death benefits common to today's life insurance policies for terminal, critical and chronic illnesses
• explain the methods for determining accelerated benefit amounts, how they are paid out, and their effects on the policy's death benefit
  
• demonstrate understanding of the differences between riders that accelerate death benefits for chronic illness and those that accelerate benefits for long-term care
• summarize the income tax treatment of accelerated benefits
  
• describe the marketing and solicitation requirements that attend to sales of accelerated death benefits, and the suitability factors producers should evaluate to determine whether or not accelerated death benefits are appropriate for any given client or prospect