It's extremely important to select the company that fits your long term goals when it comes to life insurance. You want to make sure the company has strong financial background, company has good history of paying claims and looking into historic tables of rates of return is the most critical thing, when it comes to choosing whole life insurance policy.
 
There two types of companies:
 
Mutual Co. & Stock Co.
 
Some stock companies are MetLife, Prudential, AIG etc...
 
Some mutual Companies are Northwestern Mutual, Mass Mutual, Liberty Mutual etc..
 
Now, the difference between a stock company and mutual company is simple:
Stock company has shareholders, any gains or Profits Company receives during the fiscal year, first get distributed to the shareholders in form of a dividends (since they're the owners of the company), what ever is left gets distributed to the policy holders. At the end of the day the dividend rate paid to the policy owners is lets just say not very significant.
 
On the other hand, in mutual companies, mutual companies don’t have stock trading publicly, therefore there are no stockholders in mutual companies, all the gains and profits are distributed to the policy holders in form of a dividend. At the end of the day, the dividend rate is significantly higher.
 
Most people choose to go with whole life policies because of the cash accumulation feature, opposed to buying term insurance, which eventually will expire and the money you've been paying for the term insurance will be eventually lost if nothing happens to the policy holder at the end of the day.
 
Now we see the benefits of going with mutual company rather than Stock company.
 
some great articles can be found here
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500
 
guys any questions contact me....

Quote from CWang on 06/26/08 at 10:00:39:

 
 
How long have you been investing? The 9% return you've received last year, is it consistent? What is the average return you've recived within the past 5, 10 years? Investing in a market is a great thing. Earning potential is unlimited for the equal amount of risk. If you're a professional, has time, knowledge about the market and access to stay on top of your investment, its great, you have a lot of potential as far as earnings opposed to buying a whole life.
 
When you bought your term policy, did you ask yourself what exactly is it going to cover in the event of premature death? Is it enough to cover all of your last expenses?
Term insurance will eventually expire? Do you need protection for the rest of your life? or  for example; until your mortgage is paid off, or your kids graduate from school?  
 
These are the type of questions I ask my clients, when talking about insurance needs.
 
Whole life provides insurance for the rest of your life, although you only might be making payments for 4.7. 10 years etc... it will never expire, Plus the death benefit grows as your policy becomes older, and it offers professional management and allocation of your investment, based on your current risk.
 
Would you be interested in 7.5% return on whole life, with minimum risk?
 
Any questions or if you feel my statement is false, I’d like to hear about it
 
My office 212-819-1800 ext 6659
Eugene Goldberg
www.nmfn.com/EugeneGoldberg

Quote from Mogul on 06/27/08 at 12:55:46: