When you’re looking around at various life insurance policies, how do you decide which one is the right policy for you? You could listen to your insurance agent, but he/she has a vested interest in selling you an expensive policy. There are a lot of different life insurance policies available, seeking to accomplish different things. What product is best for you depends on what your financial goals are.
Here we compare two popular options: Whole life insurance vs. Indexed Universal Life insurance.
- What is Whole Life Insurance?
- What is IUL Insurance?
- How does IUL Compare with Whole Life Insurance?
- Similarities Between IUL and Whole Life Insurance
- Differences Between IUL and Whole Life Insurance
- Compare an IUL Quote with a Whole Life Insurance Quote
What is Whole Life Insurance?
Whole life insurance is permanent life insurance with a savings account component attached. As the name implies, whole life insurance lasts your whole life. It’s designed to offer financial protection to your dependents and leave them some money when you pass away.
Whole life insurance costs much more than say, term life insurance because of the savings component, called the cash value. This is different from the death benefit, which is the amount your beneficiaries receive after you die. For example, if you buy a $100,000 whole life insurance policy, $100,000 is the death benefit. In addition, cash value builds in a tax-deferred savings account. You can borrow from this account (with interest). If you don’t pay it back, the loan amount is subtracted from the death benefit.
If your whole life insurance is held by a mutual company, you might earn dividends. You can either re-invest those to get more insurance or you can pay the premiums. Learn more about dividend paying whole life insurance policies.
Whole life insurance comes with hefty premium amounts, because of the cash value and the conservative interest rate you earn on the cash value account of a whole life policy, usually at 2%. On the other hand, the cash value in indexed universal life insurance policies usually earn a much higher interest rate of 5-7% thanks to its growth tied to the performance of market indexes such as the S&P 500.
>>MORE: A Guide to the Best Whole Life Insurance Companies
What is IUL Insurance?
IUL (Indexed Universal life insurance) is also a type of permanent life insurance, meaning it lasts your entire life. It also features a cash-value component, but unlike whole life insurance, this money can be invested in an index. An index is a group of investments that reflect the market as a whole. Popular indexes are the S&P, and the Nasdaq 100. In this way, it’s like investing in an index fund or an EFT.
You’re not actually investing in the market, just that the company uses the index to set the interest rate. There is a guaranteed minimum interest rate, but it fluctuates based on market performance. There is often a cap on how much interest you can earn. For example, if the market performs spectacularly and earns 30% but your cap is set at 10%, you’ll earn 10%. However, if the market returns negative numbers, in other words, loses money, you will earn 0% or 2% interest rate as the floor rate. But you won’t actually lose money, you just don’t make any or make very little that year. Different insurance companies offer different cap rates and floor rates in their IUL products, be sure to check out our recommendations of the 6 best IUL companies before making the final decision on the company you want to go with.
>>MORE: Should I Invest in S&P 500 Index Through an Indexed Universal Life Insurance Policy?
Indexed Universal life insurance is non-guaranteed universal life insurance—the rate of return is not guaranteed, and may, in fact, be 0% or 2% at the floor rate of the policy.
>>MORE: Case Studies of Universal Life Insurance
How does IUL Compare With Whole life insurance?
Which type of insurance is best for you depends on your long-term goals. In a nutshell, if your main goal is to grow cash value account and benefit from its tax-free withdrawal benefit to supplement your retirement income or for any personal purpose, you should go with an indexed universal life insurance policy. If you main goal is to have a guaranteed permanent death benefit for your beneficiary when you pass away, you should choose a whole life policy.
With that, let’s have a closer look at their similarities and differences:
Similarities Between IUL and Whole Life Insurance
- Both are types of permanent life insurance—they last your entire life
- Both build cash value
- Both allow cash value account to grow tax-deferred and when you withdraw from or take a loan against the cash value account, it is tax free.
- Both offer a lump sum, tax-free death benefit to your beneficiaries
Differences Between IUL and Whole Life Insurance
- Indexed Universal Life usually offers a higher rate of return in the cash value account.
- Whole life insurance has a guaranteed rate of 2%, whereas IUL is based on market performance. However, the average rate of return of the S&P 500 over the last 40 years is roughly 8%.
- You really need a competent financial advisor or life insurance agent to set up a IUL policy correctly
- With IUL, you want to have the lowest death benefit possible—most of the premiums should go to the cash value
- IUL is more flexible; it’s easier to withdraw or borrow from the cash value. You can skip, increase, or decrease premiums
- IUL always requires a medical exam; whole life is easier to get if you’re older or have health issues and don’t want to have a medical exam, you can get a small whole life policy of $5,000 – $25,000, usually for final expenses.
- IUL can be a bit more complicated than whole life insurance because of its flexibilities. If you don’t understand all of their features well, it can sound a bit complicated.
- IUL is a lot less expensive than whole life
In general, although Indexed Universal life insurance is more complex, it often results in a higher rate of return. Cash value grows at a faster rate, and fees are usually lower. You really need a competent financial agent to set a up an IUL policy correctly.
>>MORE: Understanding Indexed Universal Life Insurance – Is It Good for Retirement Planning?
Compare an IUL Quote with a Whole Life Insurance Quote
To put this in proper perspective, we got two quotes for the same man, who is a 40-year old and living in California: one quote for whole life policy and the other for indexed universal life policy. He doesn’t smoke and exercises regularly. He wants to pay premiums for 20 years only, from 41-60 years old and $300,000 death benefit.
For a more thorough breakdown of whole life insurance quotes, see Whole Life Insurance Quotes: How to Get and Compare Multiple Quotes?
Below are the breakdown of the two policies based on their illustrations, focusing on the guaranteed permanent death benefit:
| Whole Life Quote | Indexed Universal Life Quote | ||
| Carrier and Product | Penn Mutual Guaranteed Whole Life | Nationwide Indexed UL Protector 2 | |
| Guaranteed Permanent Coverage | Yes | Yes | |
| Guaranteed, Permanent Death Benefit | $300,000 | $300,000 | |
| Annual premium | $3,110 | $6,240 |
For the same guaranteed permanent death benefit of $300,000, the cheapest whole life quote is more than double that of an indexed universal life insurance. It is just ridiculously expensive.
To compare another aspect of the two policies: cash value growth, we choose another indexed universal life policy from Allianz. Below is the breakdown:
| Whole Life Quote | Indexed Universal Life Quote | |
| Carrier and Product | Penn Mutual Guaranteed Whole Life | Allianz Life (Pro+Advantage) |
| Permanent Coverage | Yes | Yes |
| Annual Premium | $6,240 | $3,787 |
| Guaranteed cash value at age 90 | Yes – $256,173 | No |
| Guaranteed death benefit at age 90 | Yes – $300,000 | No |
| Non-guaranteed cash value at age 90 | $853,113 – Depend on dividend payout | $1,414,387 – Depend on the invested indexes perform |
| Non-guaranteed death benefit at age 90 | $994,807 | $1,485,106 |
With a much cheaper premium (almost half) than that of whole life policy, an indexed universal life policy (Allianz Life Pro+Advantage product) provides a much bigger cash value account, $1.4M at age 90, almost 66% more than the cash value account of a whole life policy. We should keep in mind that both are on non-guaranteed basis since they depend on the performance of the indexes and the dividend amount. Again, whole life insurance policy is just ridiculously expensive.
>>MORE: Understanding How Dividend Paying Whole Life Insurance Works
Last Thoughts
Whole life and IUL offer different ways to achieve financial goals. Which policy is right for you depends on those goals. There is no right or wrong policy, it’s what works best for you.