The book, Financial Recovery was launched in early 1981 by means of a FULL-PAGE AD and reviews in Life Insurance Selling Magazine. Read and discussed by enlightened agents, the book, with an original bibliography of fifteen references, was instrumental in obliging the life-insurance industry to launch UNIVERSAL LIFE INSURANCE..
Universal Life Insurance has turned out to be even more problematic than Whole Life Insurance and other cash value life insurance policies. See items #92, #93, #94, #95, #96, and #97 within the updated bibliography of Financial Recovery. Its appropriate replacement today, using annuities and/or conservative registered funds, together with low-cost term life insurance if a real need for insurance remains, presents an immense financial opportunity.
For a working family in the USA to obtain ADEQUATE and AFFORDABLE financial protection in the event that an income provider should die unexpectedly, has been a NATIONAL DISGRACE for over a hundred years. The industry created to provide the logical solution to that scenario defaulted years ago in favor of directing limited family funds away from insurance protection into their own coffers and what Venita Van Caspel termed funny banking.
Salesmen target anyone to whom they can pitch CASH VALUE "insurance", families of young working American minorities along with gullible professionals and seniors, including retirees. Companies structure commissions that pay salesmen handsomely for selling "policies" that produce greater company profits and human nature prevails.
The time is NOW for a unique life-insurance company or a huge FMO to market competitively priced term life-insurance nationally, promoting a team of branded WISEBIRD AGENTS repositioning TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in overcharges that have been pitched as investments over the past forty years by agents selling varieties of CASH VALUE life "insurance".
DO THE RIGHT THING AND REAP THE JUST REWARDS
While working in New York City with national consumer products marketing campaigns, I learned years ago that
BRANDING IS ESSENTIAL FOR CREATIVE MARKETING. Brand your website(s), products, services, and sales-persons to be IDENTIFIED AND REMEMBERED. A TOP LEVEL DOMAIN NAME LINKED TO YOUR OWN LOGO IS MARKETING DYNAMITE. CREATE YOUR UNIQUE BRAND by using a domain name that displays your own graphical eye-catching "OWL" or "EYE". The price of WISEBIRD.COM is $$$. The price of BIGEYE.ORG is $$$. That is an increasingly valuable business investment, not an unrecoverable cost. Own and control either unique domain name, or both. Call (941) 545-3600.
After reading the 1977 Consumers Reports on Life Insurance I decided to help my own neighbors and created an insurance business in the Columbus, Ohio area. With the help of an experienced broker in Denver, Colorado (George Diachok of Multi-Financial Corp.) I began to select, hire, train, and license capable persons to help working persons and their families locally. Within a few years my business expanded into three offices.
I wrote Financial Recovery to educate insurance agents throughout the nation, believing that when responsible human beings are enlightened, they will do the right thing to help their neighbors.
During the 1980's, by means of utilizing a closed circuit TV system together with national network marketing, THIS CREATIVE ENTREPRENEUR became a BILLIONAIRE, licensing and training customers to do the right thing financially for their own neighbors. You MUST WATCH the below video. Access it on the Youtube.com link:
Today's INTERNET is a hugely viable alternative to closed circuit TV and multi-level marketing.
A.L. Williams' huge financial success in exposing the world's weathiest industry nationally was not jeopardized by the popularity of Financial Recovery. That remarkable Organization needed neither my book, nor printed copies of its Appendix #1, to be outstandingly successful.
With three teen-agers and a younger child at home (my partner's three children and my own teen-age son), along with training agents and managing my business, I had no plans to get licensed in other states.
Returning to my nearby office every evening after family dinner, I wrote point-of-sale programs for the TI-59 programmable calculator using term life insurance rates of several life insurance companies. I mailed programmed magnetic cards to the agents around the country who had contacted me after reading Financial Recovery, in which point-of-sale annual calculations for replacing a cash-value life insurance policy were printed. Now outdated by computer technology, that TI-59 system is not included in this 2024 online edition of my book. It can be duplicated today online, driving a final nail into the coffin of exposed cash value life "insurance".
Universal Life Insurance consists of annually renewable term life-insurance (the cost of which skyrockets as one grows older) combined with flexible overcharges that create CASH VALUE, enabling salespersons, trained by the companies, to pitch life-insurance as an investment (as usual). If owned today, I might suggest, based on individual circumstances, that it be either sold for value (if possible) and/or replaced, with professional oversight, by a Wisebird Agent. For the reasons, see items #92, #93, #94, #95, #96, and #97 within the book's updated bibliography
To understand why I dedicated Financial Recovery to the late Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, please read completely the book's Introduction
Payments ("premiums") overcharges that build "cash value" were formerly fixed amounts in traditional "endowment" contracts (whole life insurance and others). Those overcharges were shrewdly changed from fixed to variable, rendering any desired cost disclosure of the UL product, in general, virtually impossible
Over the years many consumer oriented writers have done what they considered publicly important. See the book's new online Bibliography
A little history:
Life insurance companies were required by law to provide customers who lapse or discontinue a cash-value policy with either converting to a low cost term policy or receiving back a portion of the overcharges that they pay for in a cash-value policy. Prior to these laws the companies kept the entire overcharges. You may be familiar with the saying, When given a lemon, make lemonade. That is what the companies do. They meet that legal requirement by placing a Table of cash and non-forfeiture values in the pages of cash-value policies. They then cleverly train salesmen to pitch that LEGAL REQUIREMENT as their own brilliant creation, a so-called foolproof way for trusting customers to save money when planning for a secure retirement.
Following the publication of FinancialRecovery, I hired and trained over thirty agents in Ohio, appropriately replacing cash value policies with a variety of term insurance (that I think is no longer available) for family financial protection. We usually set up IRA's with recovered cash values and the premium difference. Then I retired to Florida.
A fortune will be made by BRANDING autos with "WiseBird.com" bumper stickers along with agents wearing a "WiseBird" cap (or visor) and shirt (or sweater) during face-to-face and remote presentations. Wisebird branding items can be given to contracted agents, accompanying initial commission(s).
FOR ONLINE MARKETING & PROPRIETARY BRANDING PROTECTION
The below twelve registered internet domain names --
AVAILABLE TO AN EXISTING NATIONAL TERM LIFE-INSURANCE MARKETING BUSINESS. Wisebird.com
FinancialRecoveryBook.com
WisebirdFinancial.com WisebirdAgent.com
WisebirdAgents.com
MyWisebirdAgent.com
WisebirdRecovery.com
WisebirdPartners.com
WisebirdInsurance.com
WisebirdAnnuities.com
WisebirdInvestments.com LifeInsuranceBooks.com
Today's social media make this consumer friendly business a "no brainer" for creative marketing
together with exclusive use and editing of related internet domains. When I have been able to
find a couple of ambitious partners we will repeat essentially the same business model that
made me enough money to retire in Florida as well as made many millions of dollars for others
following the release of my book. If you are interested call (941) 545-3600.
Included here online are the Introduction to Financial Recovery together with several of the book's original chapters.
The information herein is not intended to replace technical information on products offered by individual companies. Neither does this book attempt a throrough treatment of the deficiencies of the whole life and "legal reserve" (cash value) life insurance concepts, which have been documented elsewhere.*
This book provides the Author's opinion in regard to the subject matter covered. It is written and sold with the understanding that the Publisher and Author are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
State regulations regarding terminology acceptable in sales presentations vary, as do recently enacted life insurance "replacement regulations". Agents and brokers must adhere to their own regulations. The fact that industry-sponsored "replacement regulations" are clearly not in the public interest and patently designed to protect the companies against the loss of their cash value accounts must not dissuade the honest agent from exercising his responsibility to his license, to his client, and to himself.
The Author specifically disclaims any personal liability, loss, or risk incurred as a consequence of the use and application, either directly or indirectly, of any advice or information presented herein. Insurance agents should check with their own insurers to become knowledgeable about their individual MPWL policy provisions.
NOTE TO THIS COPY PLACED ONLINE IN 2024 OF THE WIDELY-READ 1980 BOOK, FINANCIAL RECOVERY:
The U.S. life insurance industry is regulated at the state levels by its "commissioners". The product referred to herein was submitted at state-wide levels for sales approval. It was cleverly termed "Modified Premium Whole Life Insurance" and, as a "whole life" product, it was made available to the public. Soon referred to more accurately as "deposit term insurance", and a viable means for enlightened agents to replace problematical "whole-life" policies for reasons presented in FINANCIAL RECOVERY. As such, it became soundly deprecated by industry sources and by misguided licensed agents. To the author's best knowledge, the MPWL product is no longer made available by the U.S. life insurance industry. For a clearer understanding, when reading these pages, replace "MPWL" with "Term Life Insurance".
FINANCIAL RECOVERY — Introduction
AN ASIDE (ON BEHALF OF A GOOD MAN)
The following tribute to the late Philip A. Hart, United States Senator from Michigan, should be unnecessary. Unfortunately, due to the 1973 hearings on the life insurance industry in the U.S. Senate's Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, of which he was chairman, it has become fashionable, in life insurance circles, to hear Philip Hart referred to contemptuously. Understanding, as we do, that the agents who fall prey to this sort of mass psychology do so from ignorance, we feel compelled to recall some facts about this man.
Philip Hart graduated from West Philadelphia Catholic High School and went to Georgetown University. At Georgetown University he was president of the student body and he graduated cum laude. He went on to law school at the University of Michigan and received his J.D. degree. When World WarII began he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army. During the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 4, 1944, he was wounded. He rejoined his division in December and was discharged in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was decorated with the Bronze Star with clusters, Invasion Arrowhead, Purple Heart and the French Croix de Guerre.
He helped to lead the legislative battles to end bigotry and he was in the forefront of the fight to aid consumers. He grew a beard, the only one in the Senate in his time, at the request of his six children as a token of solidarity with the youth of America. Upon leaving the Senate in 1976 Philip Hart said that during the years he spent in the Senate, "We . . . spent for our "security" God knows how many hundreds of billions of dollars ... Would we be less secure if we had spent ten percent of it on food and medical schools and other social needs?"
He missed, due to hospitalization for cancer treatments, the early sessions of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearings which detailed the abuses of the FBI and the CIA. However, when he made his first appearance and heard testimony about the FBI's actions against Martin Luther King and against others who had been openly critical of official policies, he moved most of his colleagues and his audience deeply with a monologue stating that his children had been right in the 1960's to claim, over his protests, that the government was trampling the rights of citizens.
Throughout his 18 years in the Senate, Philip Hart was not a fiery orator or a seeker of sensational headlines. Yet it was a measure of the esteem in which the gentle, slightly built man was held by his colleagues that in August 1976, the Senate named its new Senate Building under construction near the Capitol, the Philip A. Hart Office Building.
The Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana was asked on his last day in the Senate who had been the most outstanding Senator he had met. Without a pause, Mr. Mansfield replied: "Philip Hart. He is a man of great courage, great compassion, great determination. Don't be fooled by the exterior. He's a man of steel. He's a man who is modest, a real back-bencher."
"In debate his voice almost never shook the rafters here", said Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. "He preferred to use his words to shake our conscience and our votes. He never had an axe to grind, but he always cut through every issue to find the truth and open it up for all of us to see."
President-elect Jimmy Carter praised Senator Hart as "a man of unquestionable integrity. He exemplified the highest of moral and ethical standards in public service. He was a friend of the American consumer and a tireless worker against injustice."
In 1973, as we have mentioned, the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly heard testimony on the insurance industry. The total oral testimony and "Material Submitted for the Record" covers three volumes and 2,216 pages. It is difficult to find words suitable or strong enough to describe the shocking and disgraceful disclosures recorded by this committee of the greed, irresponsibility, and betrayal of the public trust by the life insurance industry.
Philip A. Hart died at his home in Washington of cancer on December 26, 1978 at the age of 64. He was buried on Michigan's Mackinac Island. He never lived to see reforms forthcoming by the life insurance companies or the legislative remedies enacted which he believed to be necessary.
We may not share Senator Hart's optimism with regard to the likelihood of government functioning in a moral role. Such optimism is clearly shattered by witnessing the stampede of governmental regulartory bodies, the separate state insurance departments, to enact the "NAIC Model Life Insurance Replacement Regualtions." However, if this brief book can claim any inspiration and dedication it is to Senator Philip A. Hart. Certainly, anyone aware of these facts will be less inclined to join in deriding the name of a good man who cared deeply about his fellow human beings and about the quality of our lives.
* Five criteria to apply to every proposed investment:
#1 First, and PRIMARY is SAFETY
#2 is YIELD (interest or earnings growth)
#3 is FLEXIBILITY (Can I make periodic deposits/withdrawals of various amounts without incurring serious charges?)
#4 is LIQUIDITY (Can I withdraw all or a portion at will? - real-estate is a good example - it may be an excellent investment but it is not liquid because, in general, 100% must be liquidated to access any portion
#5 is TAX CONSEQUENCES (Does my account grow in a tax-deferred environment and does it affect my over-all tax liability?)
There is probably a big difference between a term-insurance premium and what you are paying for a cash-value life-insurance policy. Why lose control of that money? Do you really believe that any corporation today considers your interests before that of its managers and stock-holders?
