WASHINGTON BUREAU — The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is responding to the criticism prompted by the Bernard Madoff scandal by intensifying its exam process. Full Article…

Universal life insurance can be viewed as a marriage between life insurance and saving. You decide how much death benefit you want your universal life insurance policy to have and the frequency of your premium payments. You also decide how much money should be applied to your saving account and how much to life insurance. The amount of monthly outlay can vary as long as there is a sufficient amount to take care of the death benefit plus administrative costs.In other words you say to the insurance company, for example, “I have $200.00 per month that I want to put in this policy, I want $250,000 of life insurance and the rest of my monthly payment should go into a savings plan.

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What is whole life insurance? With the recent chatter brought about by the recession interest in whole life insurance. Whole life insurance is a contract between an individual and a life insurance company stating that if the individual dies the company will pay a specific sum to specified beneficiary. The responsibility of the individual is to pay the premiums as per the contract. The individual can keep the policy for the rest of his or her life. Some companies use age 100 as their standard. This policy can never be taken away from you. What is whole life insurance? Some people put it this way. Whole life insurance is much like an endowment to age 100.

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Ohio Gov. John Kasich has signed a budget bill that includes a provision repealing the state’s estate tax.

Kasich, R, signed the 3,262-page, $56 billion House Bill 153 into law Thursday evening.

The bill has created a budget for a 2-year period that starts today.

The estate tax elimination provision in House Bill 153 is set to take effect Jan. 1

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Did you know that whole life insurance or some variation thereof is bought more than another types in the United States? Why do you think this is so? Is it because the people know nothing about term insurance? Not so! Term insurance is simple to understand. You own $1,000,000 of term life insurance for a specific period of time and you die within that period the life insurance company pays $1,000,000, as long as you keep paying the premiums. Everyone knows about term life insurance. Permanent life insurance is a different matter. There is much more to absorb when it comes to a permanent policy.

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The fundamentals for private mortgage insurers were supposed to have improved by now. They haven’t.

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A year and a half ago, market watchers were expecting the companies to pick up more business after their main competitor, the Federal Housing Administration, adopted tougher standards.

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Get a universal life insurance quote but first let us see what this type of insurance is all about. Universal life insurance is term insurance with a saving element attached. The premium payer may set the death benefit according to his or her ability to pay. Universal life allows the premium payer the flexibility of setting the amount and frequency of the payments. The premiums you pay include an amount that is applied saving. The amount of the premium can vary. In other words you decide how much premium payment to make each month.As long as the premium payments are sufficient to take care of the cost of insurance plus administrative costs you may vary your payments.

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A Shelby County, Ala., law enforcement officer says National Computer Forensics Institute training helped him foil an attack on an insurance company’s 401(k) plan.

Clay Hammac, who works in the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, testified at field hearing organized by the House Financial Services Committee.

The committee looked at ways to help law enforcement protect private financial information.

NCFI support has been especially valuable, Hammac said, according to a written version of his testimony posted on the committee website.

Computer forensics training can help with the investigation of violent crimes, such as murder and kidnapping, but it is also vital in investigations of financial crimes, Hammac said.

Recently, he said, he was contacted by an employee of a nationally recognized insurance company.

“The employee made a simple complaint indicating that she believed her 401(k) account was electronically compromised,” Hammac said. “Utiliz Full Article…