Being a Bank On Yourself Professional is a challenging but very rewarding career. Challenging because Bank On Yourself goes against the grain of what Americans have been taught about money and finances, and because of the investment of time it takes to master the ins and outs of the concept, technical information, and plan design.
For those who stick with it, however, the rewards are many. Perhaps the greatest satisfaction comes from knowing you are changing your clients’ lives by helping them achieve the financial peace of mind they seek and deserve.
Though there is a need for additional Bank On Yourself Professionals, throughout the United States and Canada, not everyone has what it takes to be successful with this, and not everyone is accepted into the training program.
If you have a life insurance license and at least one year of experience in financial services, you may qualify to be accepted into the Bank On Yourself training program. Please understand that it’s not just past success that’s considered. Attitude and a willingness to be mentored are key factors.
Do You Have What it Takes to Become a Bank On Yourself Professional?
Given the many hours of additional training needed to become expert at designing and implementing Bank On Yourself, and the fact that Bank On Yourself Professionals earn much smaller commissions selling Bank On Yourself policies than traditionally designed life insurance policies, you may be wondering why anyone in financial services would embrace the Bank On Yourself approach.
Here are some of the reasons shared by several Bank On Yourself Professionals about why they are so passionate about helping their clients implement this concept:
Russ Grzywinski reveals how Bank On Yourself challenged his beliefs, and how he became convinced it made sense:
After working with whole life insurance in the beginning of my career, I got into the “buy term and invest the difference” idea. The belief was that whole life insurance was a lousy place to store money. We weren’t thinking about financing, we were thinking about where you put money, and it wasn’t going to be in a life insurance policy. People were saying, “Why would I want to do that?”
Before I even considered offering Bank On Yourself as a part of my practice, I spent about three months doing my own research. I went back and looked at everything that I could find to make sure that what I was being told was true. I had to get a comfort level for myself.
One of the ways I finally came to grips with it is that I said, “Okay, let’s break apart all the pieces of what I know about a cash value dividend-paying life insurance policy.” I basically disassembled it and then reassembled it and verified each piece in my mind and said, okay, if I have a cash value policy, can I borrow the money out? The answer is yes.
So I went through that process with each individual component and verified each one. Once I did that, I was 100 percent convinced that everything I was being told about it was in fact true, because there was no way to refute it.”
Why do Bank On Yourself Professionals focus their practice on Bank On Yourself, even though the commissions they make on Bank On Yourself policies are much smaller than traditional whole life policies? According to Alan Eckstrand:
There is a significant portion of the total premium that we get very little compensation on. With Bank On Yourself, on average we are taking a 50 percent pay cut versus traditional insurance. I talked to twenty-five people about joining my organization and about twenty-three of them right off the bat, the minute they heard that, said, “What do you mean, ‘take a pay cut’? What’s the matter with you?” Their minds clicked closed, and that was the end of it.
So why is this good business? For one thing, you create a client who is going to buy many more plans than somebody who bought traditional plans. I have a client who bought twelve policies in two years. That would never happen with traditional life insurance.
The other factor is the referrals. Bank On Yourself Professionals get a lot more referrals without even asking for them, because people get so excited about this. Typically you almost never get a referral for life insurance.”
Bank On Yourself Professionals don’t have to apologize to their clients for the disappointing and unpredictable results they’ve gotten by following conventional financial and retirement planning strategies. In the words of Joe Ballarino:
I’ve heard the statistic that something like 95 percent of all the people that go into the life insurance business don’t last much more than five years. It can be hard to keep clients. Just about everyone that got to be a client of mine over the years has previously had all kinds of disappointments with financial planning. So when people understand what Bank On Yourself can do for them, we know that there is not going to be a disappointment down the road. They are happier; they do more business with you. Just about everything else has more risk or is less worthwhile. For me, it was that I didn’t want to have to apologize to clients. That’s the long story short.”
David Biondo explains it this way:
When we were doing financial planning or investment planning during the bull market, we felt like king of the castle, right? Then when the markets tanked, who got blamed? We got blamed. Our clients love us when things are good. They blame us and they hate us when things are bad. With Bank On Yourself, the cash value doesn’t go up one day and down the next. When clients leave my office, people in the offices around me say that my clients are the happiest people they see. I’ve never really experienced that selling life insurance before. People are flocking to Bank On Yourself like there is no tomorrow.”
If you think you have what it takes to become a Bank On Yourself Professional, take the next step to be considered for the training program.
