The birth of universal life

Article Abstract:

Group universal life insurance results from several breakthroughs in the insurance industry. Each stage of development contributed to a new way of seeing life insurance as a flexible product that could be adapted to consumers' needs, rather than as a fixed plan. The first milestone was the realization that life insurance is a commodity, and that insurance companies could benefit by learning the merchandising and product design techniques used to market other consumer goods. The second concept, called Building Block Pensions, visualized pension products as a continuum that ranged from completely guaranteed pensions to unguaranteed products. Building Block Pensions incorporated two ideas from portfolio management into insurance planning - the capital (or minimum) guarantee of segregated assets, and the super interest guarantee, which allows the policy holder to have the option of selecting a higher rate of interest than the nonpar rate. The later stages of the development of group universal life involved getting the insurance industry to accept the new product and adapting industry marketing practices to the flexible nature of universal life.

Management, Product development, Life insurance, Universal life insurance

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DM newcomer

Article Abstract:

Liberty Mutual, a Boston insurance firm, is an example of a large company successfully entering the direct mail marketplace. Liberty Mutual sent out two direct mail packages on May 1, 1985; one was a traditional looking advertisement and the other was more contemporary in its use of color and graphics. These mailings were coordinated with a general advertising campaign handled by Wells, Rich, and Green. In the direct mail effort, the response rate to the contemporary design was three times greater than the traditional package. Liberty had to surmount problems such as: creating a typical mail order package while advertising low rates; speeding up paper work and processing with computers; developing training methods to gain sales force cooperation; report generating; and recapturing overhead communication expenditures.

Case studies, Marketing, Insurance industry, Direct marketing, Automobile insurance, Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.

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A universal Tango?

Article Abstract:

Tango is a novel mean for identifying Beta-sheet aggregation propensity, which can predict peptides and their mutants aggregate in various amyloidogenic diseases. Tango also predicts protein aggregation that is related to disease.

Care and treatment, Comparative analysis, Amyloidosis, Identification and classification, Peptides, Proteins, Protein structure

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