“With a whole life policy, the insurance company specifies an age at which the policy’s face value will be paid as an endowment to the policy owner if the insured person has not died by that time.”
I think this is for the situation where insured person has not died and the policy has been terminated by policy owner. In that case, policy cash value, rather than policy’s face value, will be paid as an endowment to the policy owner, right? If the policy has been terminated before insured dies, policy cash value will be withdrawn by policy owner and the beneficiary will get nothing, right?
Then that statement from curriculum is incorrect. The policy’s cash value, rather than face value, will be paid as an endowment to the policy owner. During the life of a policy, cash value may not equal to face value.
I think face value should always pay to the insured. If not, policyholder can make profit from it. Policyholder can make premium payment for a few years (let’s say 5 years) and terminate the policy, and then get the full face value (death benefit), even the insured does not die.
^ No, you had it right the first time: on surrender, the life insurer pays out the cash surrender value, not the face amount. For whole life, you have to survive all the way to the endowment age to collect the full face amount.
“With a whole life policy, the insurance company specifies an age at which the policy’s face value will be paid as an endowment to the policy owner if the insured person has not died by that time.”
The statement is correct. The policy usually endows at age 100. As long as it’s not canceled, surrendered, or lapses, and as long as the insured is still living. The funds go to the policy owner. Most of the time the insured and the owner are the same person. a lot of the time they are not. The owner has full rights to the policy (in most cases).
The beneficiary is not a party to the contract and only has rights to the death benefits after the insured dies. Sometimes the beneficiary is given rights before death.such as in the case of a collateral assignment. I don’t know how far your material goes into the details.