The people behind Rainbow’s Insurance

RainbowWilson JonKite

Insurance Analyst

Neal Halawa

AIF®

Howard Kite

CFP®, CLU, ChFC

Partner at Forum Financial Management

A Family Legacy. A Second Chance. A Different Kind of Insurance Company.

It Started With My Father

My father began as an insurance producer. In the 1980s, he built Terra Financial Securities with his partners, a firm that grew to roughly 500 representatives, and they sold to General Electric, where it became part of GE Financial Assurance. He later served as Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of Sales at Genworth, which became a public company in 2004.

After that, he founded Pinnacle Wealth Management, which was a broker-dealer and a Brokerage General Agency for insurance, alongside his partnership in Forum Financial Management, a fee-based Registered Investment Advisory firm started by the brain trust from Terra.

The Successor Who Couldn’t Stop Working

The succession plan was me.

I took it seriously, and I took it too far. Seventy-hour weeks became normal. I pushed myself to learn as quickly as I could because my father wanted to retire, and I believed I had to become his replacement.

Eventually, the pressure became too much. I experienced severe episodes of mania and psychosis and was hospitalized three times.

In the end, I quit.

A Legacy in Trusted Hands

My father held out hope that I would come back.

Then, in 2018, he finally asked me directly if I was ever returning.

I said no.

I wasn’t going to become my father’s replacement, responsible for providing the insurance and broker-dealer products and resources that Forum’s advisors had relied on him to provide.

So he called Neal Halawa.

My father had helped train Neal in the industry roughly twenty years earlier. By then, Neal had accumulated decades of knowledge and experience of his own. More importantly, Neal understood my father’s philosophy about insurance.

It was my philosophy, too. Do what’s right for the client.

That made Neal the perfect fit. My father could finally entrust his legacy to someone he knew, someone he had helped train, and someone who believed insurance should be approached the same way he did.

Coming Back on My Own Terms

Years later, I came back.

But this time, I wasn’t coming back to replace my father. I wanted to build something different.

I wanted to be unabashedly myself. Rainbow. It was about building my company. Not handling my father’s legacy.

That’s how Rainbow’s Insurance came to be.

And this time, I don’t have to do it alone.

Neal’s mentorship gives me access to decades of accumulated knowledge while allowing me to build Rainbow’s Insurance around the philosophy we share.

Through Neal, I have access to insurance solutions through Ash Brokerage, as well as his knowledge, underwriting experience, counseling, policy-review expertise and the resources of his team.

There isn’t a separate consulting charge to Rainbow’s Insurance for that support. Neal is compensated through an override on the policies we place through this relationship.

That structure means I don’t have to recreate decades of infrastructure and expertise from scratch. It also allows me to direct more of the compensation available on a case to the agents sending us clients and build what I believe is an exceptionally generous agent compensation model.

But the greatest difference isn’t financial. It’s something I learned the hard way. I don’t have to know everything.

When I was supposed to replace my father, I thought I had to become the person with every answer. Today, when I don’t know something, I have someone with decades of experience I can call.

My father’s career gave me the foundation. Neal Halawa gave me a way back into the industry without having to become my father. And my own experience gave me the opportunity to build Rainbow’s Insurance differently.

We can review the insurance you already own. We can give you a second opinion on insurance someone else is recommending. And when another solution is better—even when that solution doesn’t pay us—we can tell you that, too.

Because our job isn’t to sell you something.

Our job is to help you understand your options and make the decision that’s right for you.

Rainbow’s Promise: Protect people first. Everything else comes second.

What We Will Not Do

Knowing what an insurance company won’t do can be just as important as knowing what it will.

• We will not create urgency that does not exist. There is no rate deadline worth signing something you don’t understand. If a genuine deadline exists—because of age, underwriting, an expiring offer or another legitimate reason—we’ll explain exactly what it is and why it matters.
• We will not recommend replacing existing coverage without showing you what you could be giving up. That means considering surrender charges, potential tax consequences, existing guarantees and benefits, new surrender periods, new contestability provisions and fresh underwriting before recommending a replacement.
• We will not present life insurance as a retirement account. Life insurance is life insurance. Some policies accumulate cash value that can play a role in a broader financial strategy, but we’ll explain the costs, risks, limitations and insurance purpose of the contract.
• We will not recommend Indexed Universal Life or Variable Universal Life based on optimistic projections while ignoring the guarantees. If we’re evaluating an IUL or VUL, we want to understand what happens when performance doesn’t meet expectations. Insurance should provide protection you can understand—not require a bet on an illustration coming true.
• We will not chase you. If you go quiet, we’ll follow up a small, finite number of times and then leave you alone. You know where we are.

And there’s one more: We will not manufacture a reason for you to buy something.

Sometimes the conclusion of a policy review or second opinion will simply be: Keep what you have. We’re perfectly comfortable giving you that answer.

Who We Serve

Rainbow’s Insurance proudly serves LGBTQ+ individuals, couples, chosen families and business owners, around the country. If we’re not licensed in your state we will be if we need to.

We understand that family doesn’t always fit neatly into a traditional box. Insurance planning may involve a spouse, partner, children, parents, business partners, close friends or the chosen family you’ve built around you.

Everyone is welcome.

The LGBTQ+ community is simply the community we come from and know best.

Whoever you are, our promise is the same: Protect people first. Everything else comes second.

If this site does not work for you, that is our problem to fix.

We build toward the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA. In practice that means: semantic headings in order, visible keyboard focus, color contrast that holds in both light and dark themes, text alternatives for images, form fields with real labels, a skip link, and respect for reduced-motion settings.

Service, not just the website

Plain-English explanation is the core of what this practice does, and that includes access. Tell us what works for you: large-print documents, a phone call instead of a form, extra time, a support person on the call, or a written summary after a conversation. None of it is a special request.

Tell us where we fall short

Email RainbowWilsonJonKite@gmail.com or call (708) 571-2279 with the page and what went wrong, and we will fix it and reply to you.

Protect the money you do not want exposed to market losses.

Not every dollar needs to chase maximum growth. Some money has a job: be there, in a known amount, at a known time. Fixed annuities are insurance contracts designed for that job — and they are sold far more often than they are explained.

The three kinds we discuss

What we will make you look at before you sign anything

• The guaranteed rate, and exactly how long the guarantee lasts
• The surrender period and the surrender charge schedule, year by year
• What happens when the guaranteed rate ends — on some MYGAs the surrender period ends with the guarantee, but on others it runs longer, and the rate then renews at a level the carrier sets, which may be lower. Ask exactly how long each lasts and what the renewal rate would be.
• Free-withdrawal provisions — how much you can take each year without a charge
• Market value adjustment, if the contract has one
• Income options, and what electing one gives up permanently
• Tax treatment, including the additional federal tax that can apply to withdrawals before age 59½
• Death benefit provisions, and how your named beneficiary is actually paid
• The financial strength of the issuing carrier — the guarantee is only as good as the company behind it

And just as importantly: when an annuity does not make sense.

An annuity is a tool, not an answer for everyone. If you may need the money inside the surrender period, if you have no emergency fund outside the contract, if the pitch depends on a rate that applies only to year one, or if the product is being presented as an investment rather than an insurance contract — slow down. We would rather lose the sale than put someone in a contract they will need to break.

A note for unmarried partners

Spousal continuation provisions — which let a surviving spouse take over a contract rather than liquidate it — generally rely on legal marital status. If you are not married, the beneficiary outcome can look very different, and it is worth structuring the contract with that fully understood rather than discovered later. We will walk through it with you.

Strategies We Agree With

Work with Rainbow

Rainbow’s Insurance works with agents, and we are building what we believe is an exceptionally generous agent compensation model, directing more of the compensation available on a case to the agents who send us clients.

If you are a licensed agent, or want to become one, and you believe people should understand their insurance before they make decisions about it, we would like to hear from you.

Protect your paycheck.

If an illness or injury stopped you working, how long could you keep paying rent or the mortgage, the bills, the food, the insurance, the people who depend on you? For most working people, income — not the house, not the retirement account — is the asset every other plan is built on.

Start with what you already have

We look at your employer benefits before we quote anything, because the gap is usually more specific than people assume.

• Is there short-term disability, long-term disability, or both?
• What percentage of income does it replace, and is there a monthly cap that bites at your salary?
• Does it cover bonus, commission or self-employment income — or only base salary?
• Who pays the premium? If your employer pays it, benefits are generally taxable to you; if you pay with after-tax dollars, benefits are generally not.
• Is the definition of disability “own occupation” or “any occupation”, and does it change?
• Does the coverage follow you if you leave? Usually it does not.

That tax point catches people constantly. A group plan replacing 60% of salary, taxable, can land nearer 40–45% of the money you actually live on.

The four terms that decide the policy

If you are self-employed or run the business

There is no group plan behind you, and there is often no one who can run the business in your absence. Alongside individual disability income coverage, ask about business overhead expense coverage, which is designed to keep rent, payroll and fixed costs moving while you recover — a separate product from the one that replaces your personal income.

Guaranteed Universal Life “Term insurance for life.”

▶ Watch the comic

Guaranteed Universal Life is long-term life insurance built around a guaranteed death benefit rather than cash-value accumulation. You are buying the protection, not a savings account with a policy wrapped round it.

How it works

Ordinary term insurance ends after a set number of years. GUL does not have to. Depending on the carrier and how the policy is structured, the death benefit can be guaranteed to a specified advanced age — commonly 65, 90, 95, 100 or 121 — provided every premium and guarantee requirement is satisfied.

That last clause is the whole product. The guarantee is contractual, and it is conditional.

Who GUL tends to suit

• A need that does not expire. A partner who would lose your pension or Social Security income, a lifelong dependent, a special-needs trust to fund.
• Estate liquidity. Property, a practice or a business that heirs would otherwise have to sell in a hurry to cover taxes and costs.
• Buy-sell and key-person funding where the obligation lasts as long as the owners do.
• People who were shown IUL or whole life and want the guaranteed death benefit without the moving parts, the surrender schedule and the funding risk.
• Unmarried partners who cannot rely on survivor benefits and need a certainty that outlives a 20-year term.

Who it does not suit

If you want meaningful cash value you can access, GUL is the wrong tool — by design it holds little. If your need genuinely ends in 18 years, term will cost you less. If your income is irregular and you cannot commit to a premium on a schedule, the guarantee is fragile in your hands and we will say so.

Universal Life Insurance Structures

General product characteristics only. Features, guarantees, riders and availability vary by carrier, state and contract.

What to ask before you sign a GUL

• To what age is the death benefit guaranteed, and what exact premium sustains that?
• What happens to the guarantee if a payment is 30 days late? 60?
• Is there a catch-up provision, and what does it cost?
• Does the policy allow loans or withdrawals, and what do they do to the guarantee?
• What is the carrier’s financial strength rating, and with which agency?
• Is there a return-of-premium or surrender option, and what does it actually return?

Suitability is the legal standard. It is a low bar.

In every state but one, a life insurance salesman is not required to act as your fiduciary. The legal standard most agents are held to is suitability: the product has to be appropriate for someone in your situation. It does not have to be the best available option, the cheapest option, or the option that pays the agent least.

New York is currently the only state that imposes a best-interest standard on life insurance recommendations, through its Regulation 187. Everywhere else, two agents can show you two very different products and both be within the rules.

For New York Residents →

We think the word fiduciary belongs in every state’s insurance law. Until it does, we hold ourselves to it voluntarily — in writing, on every recommendation.

That is not a marketing line, it is an operating constraint. It means we will tell you to keep the policy you have. It means we will tell you the term policy is enough. It means that when the best answer earns us nothing, you still get the best answer.

Queer lives do not fit the default application.

Most insurance planning quietly assumes a married couple, biological children, and a family that shows up. Plenty of our clients have none of those things and need the coverage more, not less.

• Unmarried partners, who get no Social Security survivor benefit and no automatic inheritance — the beneficiary designation is the entire plan
• Chosen family and non-relatives as beneficiaries, where insurable interest and carrier paperwork need doing properly the first time
• New parents through adoption, surrogacy, IVF or fostering, often carrying real debt from the way they became parents
• People living with HIV, who have more underwriting options today than the industry’s reputation suggests — carrier by carrier, and worth shopping properly
• Trans and non-binary applicants navigating gendered rate classes, prior names and records that do not match
• Solo agers without adult children, for whom long-term care planning is a logistics problem as much as a money problem

Three generations of this work, and one rule.

Jonathan Wilson Kite AKA Rainbow is a licensed life and health insurance producer — the third generation of a family that has been doing this work. That history is the reason for the rule, not a decoration on it: when you have watched the industry from the inside for that long, you know exactly which products get sold hardest and why.

If the best solution doesn’t pay us, we’ll still recommend it.

We are not a fee based firm. We get paid on commission because that is how insurance works. We provide free policy reviews, free analysis, free second looks, and if we earn a commission it is because we provide the best product for you, the client, whose best interest is always considered sacred.

You should not have to explain your life to get a straight answer.

Our mascot wears a harness for a reason. A lot of people in this community have had the experience of sitting across from a professional and deciding, halfway through, to leave out the parts that actually matter. That is a bad way to buy insurance, because the parts left out are usually the ones the plan depends on.

What this actually changes about the planning

Less than people expect, and more than nothing. The products are the same. What differs is the shape of the household, the shape of the income, and who is standing in the hospital corridor.

• Households that are not two people. Beneficiary designations, insurable interest and percentage splits need to be written deliberately, because no default in any state will produce the outcome you want.
• Non-legal relationships that are functionally family. Insurance can pay a named person directly. Getting that designation right is often the most consequential twenty minutes of the whole engagement.
• Irregular and multi-source income. Performers, makers, sex workers, event producers and gig workers get underwritten on documented income. How income is documented affects what disability coverage is even available — and that is worth planning before you apply, not during.
• Event organizers and title holders often carry costs, deposits and obligations personally. That is a real exposure with a name and a product.
• Privacy. What you tell us stays with us. Applications ask medical and financial questions, not questions about your private life, and we will tell you in advance exactly what any application will ask.

Where you will find us

Chicago is home to some of the largest leather and kink gatherings in the world, and we would rather be a familiar face at them than a stranger with a landing page. Expect us at community events, runs, fundraisers and markets with plain-English teach-ins — not a booth trying to close you on the spot.

Bring your policy to the event. We will read it there, for free, with no follow-up unless you ask for one.

The business is an asset. You are the one holding it up.

In a small business, the difference between an inconvenience and a closure is usually one person being unavailable. Queer-owned businesses carry an extra layer: ownership, partnership and succession arrangements that rest on documents rather than on assumptions the law makes for married couples.

Four exposures worth an hour of your time

Benefits, for a team you cannot afford to lose

Small employers can offer more than they think: group or voluntary life, disability, and supplemental products the employee pays for through payroll. For a queer-owned business, the benefits package is also a statement about what kind of employer you are — inclusive coverage, affirming provider networks, and domestic-partner eligibility where a carrier offers it are worth asking about explicitly rather than accepting whatever the default plan has.

What we do not do

General liability, professional liability, cyber, commercial property and workers’ compensation are not our line. We will refer you to a commercial broker and say plainly whether a referral fee is involved.

Where we meet business owners

We are building this practice inside the community it serves — LGBTQ+ chambers of commerce, queer business networks, and the rooms where owners actually talk to each other. If your organization wants a plain-English session on what business owners get sold and what they actually need, ask. We do it for free.

Queer lives do not fit the default application.

Most insurance planning quietly assumes a married couple, biological children, and a family of origin that shows up when things go wrong. A great many of our clients have none of those things — which is precisely why the paperwork has to be right.

Where the defaults fail us

The beneficiary designation is the whole plan

For an unmarried partner there is no automatic inheritance, no spousal rollover, and no Social Security survivor benefit. A life insurance policy pays the person named on the form, directly, generally outside probate. That makes the designation one of the most powerful documents in a queer household — and one of the easiest to get wrong.

• Name a human being, not “my estate”, unless there is a deliberate reason
• Name a contingent beneficiary. Almost nobody does.
• Use full legal names as the carrier has them, and check that a name change has been processed everywhere
• Review after every marriage, divorce, separation, birth, adoption or death — including the ones a carrier never hears about
• If you have a trust, make sure the designation and the trust agree with each other

Underwriting when you are living with HIV

The industry’s reputation here is worse than its current practice, and its current practice varies enormously between carriers. Some carriers will consider applicants who are in ongoing treatment with good clinical markers; others still decline. Rates, available products and the age limits differ carrier by carrier.

This is the clearest possible argument for working with an independent agent rather than a captive one. A single-company agent can only take you where their company goes. We can take your file to the carriers most likely to say yes, and we will tell you honestly what the realistic range looks like before you sit through a paramedical exam.

Underwriting outcomes depend on the carrier, the product, your full medical history and the information disclosed on the application. Nothing here is a promise of approval or of a particular rate class.

Trans and non-binary applicants

Life and disability insurance pricing still uses gendered rate classes, and applications, medical records, pharmacy databases and identity documents do not always agree with one another. That mismatch is an administrative problem, not a disqualification — but handled carelessly it produces delays, re-underwriting, and invasive questions you should not have to field twice.

• We discuss what the application will ask before you complete it, so nothing is a surprise
• We can raise a carrier’s practices with their underwriting desk before you apply, not after
• Prior names and records: we deal with the reconciliation so that you are not the one explaining it repeatedly
• If a carrier handles you badly, we move the file. That is the advantage of being independent.

New parents, whatever route you took

Adoption, surrogacy, IVF, reciprocal IVF, fostering — queer people routinely arrive at parenthood having already spent serious money to get there, sometimes with debt attached. Meanwhile the non-gestational or non-biological parent’s legal relationship to the child may rest on paperwork that has to be completed properly.

The insurance conversation for new parents is not complicated, and it is usually cheaper than people fear: enough term coverage to carry the household through to the child’s independence, coverage on both parents including a stay-at-home parent whose unpaid labor would have to be replaced, and beneficiary and guardianship arrangements that a court would actually recognize.

Aging without the default caregiver

Solo agers, estranged families, couples where one partner becomes the other’s caregiver with no legal standing — this is where long-term care planning stops being abstract. Funding the care is our part. Deciding who is legally allowed to direct it belongs with an attorney, and we will tell you to go and see one.

Start with the job, not the product.

Almost every bad life insurance outcome starts the same way: a product arrives before anyone has defined the job. Work out what has to keep happening if you die, for how long, and the product choice gets much simpler.

Three questions, in this order

1. Who is financially affected if you die? A partner, a child, a co-signer, a business partner, a parent you support, a mortgage nobody else can carry alone.
2. For how long? Until the mortgage is gone? Until the youngest finishes school? Until the buy-sell agreement is funded? Or for as long as you live — which is a different question with a different answer.
3. How much, in dollars? Income to replace, debts to clear, a funeral, the estate cleanup nobody plans for, and — in our community especially — the legal costs of making sure the right people actually receive it.

That third question is where a needs analysis earns its keep. We will do one with you before we quote anything.

Every life insurance illustration has two sets of numbers.

One set is guaranteed by the contract. The other set is a projection based on assumptions the insurance company is allowed to change. They sit side by side on the page, and the difference between them is where most bad surprises live.

This is the whole reason low-income and first-time buyers get hurt. A permanent policy gets presented as a retirement plan and a death benefit at once. What does not get explained is that taking money out erodes the account value, that a policy loan accrues interest, and that if the remaining value cannot cover the policy’s charges, the coverage can lapse — sometimes with a taxable event attached.

The six products you will be shown

If you are being shown IUL, VUL or whole life and the pitch is mostly about retirement income, you may be an excellent candidate for something far simpler.

Why we do not sell Indexed or Variable Universal Life without a strong guarantee in place. Insurance is a guarantee purchased from a carrier to provide the exact amount of money you purchase at the exact time you need it. A policy whose cash value, charges or death benefit depend on market or index performance — with no strong contractual guarantee underneath it — can lose you money (directly in a VUL, or through charges that keep running in an IUL when credits are low), and a product that can lose you money is not insurance in that sense. If a strong guarantee is in the contract, we will show you exactly where it is and what conditions keep it alive. If it is not, we will tell you to look at term, Guaranteed Universal Life or whole life instead.

If there is a reason for cash value — such as a forced savings vehicle to get a client used to saving out of their paycheck first, or a proxy for a portion of your bond portfolio, since with the best carrier it has historically grown at about 5% a year (a dividend-based figure that is not guaranteed) — that is perfectly acceptable. But most people will not access cash value during life, because of the proportional loss of death benefit after a partial surrender, or the interest on a policy loan and the need to repay it. They are better served by a Guaranteed Universal Life policy.

The retirement-policy pitch, taken apart

Here is the sequence that does the most damage to people who can least absorb it:

• A permanent policy is presented as both a death benefit and a retirement plan
• The buyer is told they can “take the money out tax-free later”
• What is not explained: a withdrawal permanently reduces the account value and the death benefit
• What is also not explained: a loan accrues interest, and unpaid interest compounds against the policy
• If the remaining value cannot cover the policy’s charges, coverage can lapse — and a lapse with an outstanding loan can produce a tax bill on money you never saw

Underwriting, and what we look at before we shop

We are independent, which means we place business with multiple carriers rather than one. Carriers differ enormously in how they treat the same applicant — height and weight, nicotine including cannabis and vaping, mental health history, HIV status and treatment, prescriptions, family history, travel, and occupation. Shopping the different carriers with your information is one of the best values we provide.

For LGBTQ+ applicants that difference is often the whole outcome. More on how we handle it →

Long-term care is not just nursing homes. It is who shows up.

Needing help with everyday activities — bathing, dressing, eating, moving safely around your own home — affects your savings, your independence, and whoever ends up doing the work. For a lot of our clients, there is no adult child waiting in the wings to do it unpaid.

Why this lands differently in our community

The default long-term care plan in America is an unpaid family member, usually a daughter. Plenty of LGBTQ+ people are aging without adult children, are estranged from the family they were born into, or are the ones caring for a partner with no legal standing to make decisions.

• Solo agers need a funded plan precisely because there is no default caregiver
• Chosen family needs paperwork — powers of attorney, healthcare proxies, HIPAA authorizations — to be allowed in the room at all
• Couples of any marital status need to think about what happens when the healthier partner becomes the caregiver and then needs care themselves
• Facility choice matters more when you need somewhere you will be treated with respect; paying privately widens the choice

Insurance funds the care. The legal documents decide who gets to direct it. We will point you toward an attorney for the second part — we do not draft documents, and anyone who tells you their insurance product replaces an estate plan is selling.

Three ways to fund it

Where the money comes from also has a big say in the choice. If you own a life policy with significant cash value, we can use a 1035 exchange (a tax-free exchange) to move it into a life insurance policy with linked long-term care benefits. If you own an annuity and there is no value to your plan in keeping it, we will similarly exchange it into an annuity with linked long-term care benefits. Confirm the tax treatment of any exchange with a tax professional.

What we will walk through

• What triggers benefits, and the elimination period before they start
• Daily or monthly benefit amount, benefit period, and whether there is an inflation option — the option that matters most and is skipped most
• Whether home care and adult day care are covered at the same level as a facility
• Tax treatment, and whether the contract is intended to be tax-qualified
• Rate-increase history and the carrier’s financial strength
• What your state offers, including any long-term care partnership program

How to Choose Medical Insurance

The Cheapest Plan Isn’t Always the Least Expensive Plan.

Choosing medical insurance can be frustrating. You may be looking at different premiums, deductibles, copays, coinsurance percentages, networks, prescription formularies and maximum out-of-pocket limits—all while trying to answer one basic question: Which plan is actually best for me?

There isn’t one medical insurance plan that’s best for everyone. The right plan depends on how you use healthcare.

At Rainbow’s Insurance, our goal is to help you understand what to look for so you can make an informed decision—even when the answer doesn’t result in business for us.

Still Don’t Know Which Plan to Choose?

That’s okay. Medical insurance is complicated, and sometimes two plans that look nearly identical on the first page behave very differently when you actually need healthcare.

Contact Rainbow’s Insurance. We’ll help you think through the questions that matter: your doctors, prescriptions, expected healthcare needs, network preferences and financial exposure.

If we’re able to help you directly, we’ll explain how. If the appropriate resource is a Get Covered Illinois-certified broker, navigator, government program or someone else, we’ll point you in the right direction.

If helping you doesn’t pay us, we’ll still help you. That’s the point.

Rainbow’s Promise: Protect people first. Everything else comes second.

The decision you make at 65 can follow you for the rest of your life.

Original Medicare does not cover everything. The gap gets filled either by a Medigap policy or by a Medicare Advantage plan, and the two paths are harder to switch between later than most people are told at the time.

Why the timing matters so much

There is a one-time Medigap open enrollment period that generally begins when you are 65 or older and enrolled in Medicare Part B, and runs for six months. During that window you can generally buy any Medigap policy sold in your state without medical underwriting.

After that window closes, in most states a carrier may be permitted to use medical underwriting and can decline you or charge more, except in specific guaranteed-issue situations. Some states offer additional protections.

The two paths, honestly

What we look at with you

• Your doctors and hospitals — and whether the ones who treat you well are in network
• Your prescriptions, checked against actual plan formularies rather than assumed
• Whether you travel or split the year between states — which changes the calculation significantly
• Whether you are still working past 65 with employer coverage, and how that affects your timing and any late-enrollment penalty
• Access to affirming providers, including gender-affirming care and HIV specialists, as a network question and not an afterthought
• Your budget for premium versus your tolerance for costs at the point of care

For same-sex spouses and unmarried partners

Medicare eligibility through a spouse’s work record, and Social Security survivor benefits, generally depend on legal marital status. Long-term partners who never married can find that a benefit they assumed was shared is not. It is worth checking your own record and your own timeline with the Social Security Administration rather than assuming, and we will tell you where to look.

We are not connected with or endorsed by the United States government or the federal Medicare program. We do not offer every plan available in your area. Any information we provide is limited to those plans we do offer in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov or 1‑800‑MEDICARE, or your State Health Insurance Assistance Program, to get information on all of your options.

You bought it years ago. Do you know what it does now?

Permanent life insurance is not a set-and-forget purchase. Premiums, crediting assumptions, internal charges, loans, withdrawals and underfunding can all change how long a policy stays in force. Discovering a problem at 78 is a very different situation from discovering it at 58.

What a review looks at

• How long the coverage is currently projected to last — and how long it is guaranteed to last
• Whether the premium you are paying is still sufficient under the policy’s current assumptions
• What is guaranteed in the contract and what was only ever illustrated
• Whether outstanding loans or past withdrawals are eroding the policy
• Provisions you may not have understood at purchase — no-lapse guarantee conditions, grace periods, rider terms
• Whether the policy still does the job you originally bought it to do
• Whether your beneficiary designations are current, correctly worded, and actually enforceable

The one document that answers most of it

An in-force ledger is a fresh illustration of your existing policy, run by the carrier from today’s actual values rather than from the assumptions used the day you bought it. It is free, you are entitled to it, and it is the single most useful piece of paper in this conversation.

We are not reviewing your policy to find a reason to replace it

Sometimes the recommendation is to change the funding. Sometimes it is to restore a lapsed guarantee. Sometimes it is to add term alongside what you have rather than replace anything. And often it is simply: keep what you have. An older policy frequently carries underwriting or guarantees that would be expensive or impossible to buy again today.

Bring whatever you have

The policy itself, the annual statement, the original illustration, a premium notice — any one of them is enough to start. If you cannot find any of it, we can help you request it from the carrier with your authorization.

Your Policy May Have More Options Than You Realize

Insurance policies aren’t always “keep it or cancel it.”

Depending on the type of policy, its age, the insurance company and the provisions of the contract, you may have several levers you can pull to change how the policy performs.

A policy review starts by identifying which levers are actually available to you—and what could happen if you use them.

Sometimes the Best Lever Is No Lever at All

A policy review doesn’t mean we’re going to recommend changing your policy.

Sometimes we review a contract and conclude: Keep it exactly the way it is. That’s a valuable answer, too.

The purpose of a Rainbow’s Insurance policy review is to understand what you own, what it’s doing today, what it’s designed to do in the future and what options you have if your needs have changed.

Before pulling any lever, we want you to understand what happens when you pull it.

What it costs: NOTHING

What we do with what you tell us.

We do not sell or rent your information. Ever. Not to lead buyers, not to other agents, not to marketing companies.

What we collect

Information you give us directly — name, contact details, the state you live in, and whatever you choose to tell us about your situation or send us, such as a policy or an illustration. If you apply for coverage, the carrier will collect medical, financial and identity information under its own privacy practices.

What we use it for

Responding to you, preparing a review or a quote, submitting an application you have asked us to submit, and servicing coverage placed through us. We use analytics to understand which pages are useful. We do not use your information to build advertising profiles.

Who sees it

Us, and the insurance carriers to whom you ask us to submit an application. Carriers and any third-party service providers operate under their own privacy notices. We disclose information otherwise only where the law requires it.

Your choices

You can ask us at any time to tell you what we hold, correct it, delete it, or stop contacting you, by emailing RainbowWilsonJonKite@gmail.com. Residents of California and other states with applicable privacy laws may have additional rights, and we will honor them on request regardless of whether a threshold applies to us.

We refer the things we do not do.

Rainbow’s Insurance is a life and health practice. We do not sell auto, home, renters or commercial insurance, and we are not going to pretend otherwise in order to keep you in the building.

What we will do instead

• Refer you to a property and casualty agent we would use ourselves, with a name and a direct introduction rather than a form
• Prioritize agents who treat LGBTQ+ households, unmarried co-owners and home-based businesses competently
• Tell you plainly, up front, whether a referral arrangement or fee exists in your case
• Help you think through the questions to ask them — the same way we would for a policy we do sell

Business owners

If you run a business, the split matters. General liability, professional liability, cyber, workers’ compensation and commercial property go to a commercial broker. The pieces that sit with us are the ones that depend on a person: key-person coverage, buy-sell funding, business overhead expense and individual disability, and benefits for you and your team. More for business owners →

Before you sign, call Rainbow.

If someone is selling you life insurance or an annuity right now, you are entitled to understand exactly what you are buying before you fund it. Send us the proposal. We will read it with you.

What to send

Two things, and neither of them requires you to tell the other agent anything:

• The illustration or proposal you were shown — all pages, including the ones at the back nobody reads
• What the agent told you the policy is supposed to accomplish, in your own words

That second one matters more than people expect. Most of the damage in this industry is not a bad product; it is a fine product bought for a job it was never designed to do.

What we will tell you

• What you are actually buying — the product type, in plain English, with the marketing name set aside
• What is guaranteed and what is illustrated
• What you are expected to pay, and for how long — including whether the premium is the one that keeps the guarantee alive
• The surrender period, surrender charges and what your money can do in years one through ten
• The limitations and trade-offs the sales conversation moved past quickly
• Whether the proposed coverage appears consistent with the need you described
• The specific questions you should take back to that agent before you decide

What it costs

Nothing. A second look is free. If you later choose to place coverage through us, we will tell you in writing, before we start, whether a carrier commission would be paid.

What We Will Do — And What We Will Not Do

We will give you an honest, independent second opinion.

If you’re being offered an insurance policy, we’ll help you understand what you’re buying, how it works, what it costs, what is guaranteed, and whether it actually meets your needs.

If the policy you’re considering is a good fit, we’ll tell you. We may recommend that you move forward with exactly what you’ve been offered, even if we don’t receive any compensation.

If the policy isn’t a good fit, we’ll tell you that, too. We’ll explain why and help you explore alternatives that better meet your needs. That might mean less coverage, a simpler product, stronger guarantees, lower premiums, or a different type of insurance altogether.

What we will not do is manufacture a reason to replace a good recommendation simply to earn a commission.

We won’t recommend a product because it pays us more. We won’t pressure you into buying something you don’t understand. And we won’t pretend that every insurance problem requires a new policy.

Sometimes the right answer is to keep what you have. Sometimes it’s to buy what you’ve already been offered. And sometimes it’s to consider something entirely different.

Our job isn’t to sell you a particular policy. Our job is to help you find the insurance that’s right for you.

Term Life Insurance

▶ Watch the comic

Rent the Death Benefit. Protect Your Working Years. Pay Only for the Protection You Need.

What Is Term Life Insurance?

Term life insurance is one of the most cost-effective ways to purchase a substantial amount of life insurance protection for a specific period of time.

Think of it as renting a death benefit rather than buying permanent insurance.

You select the amount of coverage you need and the number of years you want that protection. For example, you might purchase a $1 million policy with a guaranteed level premium for 20 or 30 years.

If you die while the policy is in force, your beneficiaries receive the death benefit, generally free of federal income tax.

If you outlive the term, the coverage typically expires or becomes substantially more expensive to maintain, depending on the contract.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The goal of term life insurance isn’t to die and collect a benefit. It’s to protect the people who depend on you during the years they need that protection most.

Why Is Term Life Insurance So Affordable?

Here’s something important to understand about how term insurance works. Most people who purchase term life insurance during their working years will outlive their original coverage period. That’s a major reason term insurance can provide substantial death benefits at relatively low premiums.

Insurance companies use actuarial data to estimate mortality, collect premiums from large groups of policyholders, pay claims when insured individuals die while covered, and maintain reserves and capital to meet their obligations.

Because the likelihood of death during a limited term is generally lower than over an entire lifetime, the cost of providing that protection can be significantly lower than permanent life insurance.

A Relationship That Can Benefit Both Sides

For the insurance company, term insurance provides premiums in exchange for assuming a defined mortality risk. For the policyholder, it provides financial protection against a potentially devastating event at a relatively affordable price.

If you outlive the policy, you haven’t wasted your money. You purchased protection during a period when your family or other beneficiaries could have faced serious financial consequences if you died.

It’s similar to insuring your home. You don’t hope your house burns down so you can collect a claim. You purchase insurance because you cannot afford the financial consequences if something goes wrong.

Term life insurance works the same way.

Why Your Working Years Matter

For many people, their greatest financial asset isn’t their house, retirement account or investments. It’s their ability to earn an income.

Imagine someone who is 35 years old, earns $100,000 annually and expects to work until age 65. That’s potentially $3 million in future gross earnings over 30 years, before raises, inflation, taxes or changes in employment.

If that person dies unexpectedly, the household may lose decades of expected income. Term life insurance can help replace some of that lost financial support. It can provide money for:

• Mortgage payments and other debts.
• Living expenses for a surviving spouse or partner.
• Raising children.
• Education expenses.
• Financial support for dependent family members.
• Time for survivors to adjust financially.
• Business obligations or other temporary financial needs.

The goal is to provide the death benefit during the years when losing your income would create the greatest financial hardship.

How Long Should Your Term Insurance Last?

The answer depends on what you’re trying to protect.

A 20-year term might make sense for someone who expects their children to become financially independent during that period. A 30-year term might make sense for someone who wants protection throughout most of their remaining working years. Someone approaching retirement may need a shorter term.

The important question isn’t simply: “How long can I buy insurance?” It’s: “How long will someone experience a significant financial loss if I die?”

We want to match the length of the protection to the length of the financial responsibility.

How Much Term Life Insurance Do You Need?

There isn’t one correct amount for everyone. A common starting point is a multiple of annual income, but that alone doesn’t tell the whole story. We want to understand:

• How much income would your family lose?
• How many years would they need that income replaced?
• What debts would need to be paid?
• What assets and savings do you already have?
• What other insurance is already in place?
• How much financial support would your dependents need?

And just as importantly: How much coverage can you comfortably afford to maintain?

We don’t believe in automatically recommending the largest policy someone can qualify for. We believe in recommending an amount that addresses an identifiable financial need.

What Happens When the Term Ends?

This is one of the most important things to understand before purchasing term life insurance.

At the end of the guaranteed level-premium period, several things may happen depending on your contract. The coverage may terminate, or you may have the option to continue coverage at substantially higher renewal premiums.

Some policies also provide conversion privileges that allow you to exchange eligible term coverage for permanent life insurance without new medical underwriting, subject to deadlines, age limits and product availability.

That’s why we evaluate more than the initial premium. We also want to understand what options you’ll have if your circumstances change.

What If You Develop Health Problems?

One reason conversion privileges can be valuable is that your health may change during the term. You might purchase term insurance at age 35 and develop a serious medical condition at age 45.

If your policy has an available conversion privilege, you may be able to convert eligible coverage to permanent insurance without having to qualify medically again. The new permanent coverage will generally cost more, and conversion terms vary by carrier. But the option may be extremely valuable if you can no longer qualify for new coverage at favorable rates.

A cheaper term policy isn’t necessarily the better policy if it gives up important contractual options.

When Does Term Life Insurance Make the Most Sense?

We believe term life insurance deserves serious consideration when your primary objective is to protect against the financial consequences of dying during a defined period.

It can be particularly appropriate for people with young families, mortgages, income-dependent partners, children or other temporary financial obligations. For these situations, term insurance often provides considerably more death-benefit protection per premium dollar than permanent insurance.

And because the premiums can be lower, you may have more money available for retirement savings, emergency reserves, debt repayment and other financial priorities.

When Doesn’t Term Life Insurance Make Sense?

Term life insurance may not be the right solution when the financial need is expected to continue for your entire lifetime. For example:

• You want to leave a guaranteed inheritance regardless of when you die.
• You have a dependent who may require lifelong financial support.
• You need permanent death-benefit protection for estate or business planning.
• You want to fund a permanent financial obligation.
• You want coverage that extends beyond the available term periods.

In those situations, Guaranteed Universal Life (GUL) or another form of permanent life insurance may be more appropriate.

We sometimes describe GUL as “Term Insurance for Life” because certain GUL policies emphasize a guaranteed death benefit extending to a specified advanced age rather than substantial cash-value accumulation. The guarantee depends on meeting the contract’s premium and other requirements.

Should You Buy Term and Invest the Difference?

For many people, purchasing affordable term insurance and directing the premium savings toward other financial goals can be a reasonable strategy. Rather than paying higher premiums for permanent insurance, you may choose to invest, save or pay down debt with the difference.

However, the strategy only works as intended if you actually use those savings productively. And investments are not guaranteed to perform as expected.

We believe this decision should be based on your insurance needs, financial discipline, investment objectives and ability to tolerate risk—not on a slogan.

What We Will Do — And What We Will Not Do

We will help you determine how much protection you actually need.

We will help you choose a term that corresponds to your financial responsibilities.

We will compare policies based on more than premium alone, including conversion privileges, renewal provisions and available riders.

We will explain exactly what happens when your level-premium period ends.

We will not recommend permanent life insurance simply because it generates a larger commission.

We will not recommend more coverage than we believe your financial circumstances justify.

We will not pretend that term insurance provides lifetime guarantees when it doesn’t.

And if you already have a good term policy that meets your needs, we’ll tell you to keep it.

Interested in Term Life Insurance?

If you want to protect your family, partner, chosen family or business during your working years, let’s determine how much coverage you need and how long you need it.

Rainbow’s Insurance can help you compare term insurance options and understand the contractual provisions before you make a decision.

Contact Rainbow’s Insurance for an honest conversation about term life insurance.

If the best solution doesn’t pay us, we’ll still recommend it.

Whole Life Insurance

Lifetime Protection. Guaranteed Cash Value. Financial Flexibility.

What Is Whole Life Insurance?

Whole life insurance is permanent life insurance designed to provide a death benefit for your entire life, provided the policy’s contractual requirements are met.

A traditional whole life policy generally offers:

• A guaranteed death benefit, subject to the policy’s terms.
• Premiums that remain level according to the contract.
• Guaranteed cash values that grow according to a predetermined schedule.
• Potential dividends from participating policies, although dividends are not guaranteed.
• The ability to access available cash value through policy loans or other contractual options.

At Rainbow’s Insurance, we believe whole life insurance can be valuable when its guarantees, costs and cash-value features serve a specific purpose in someone’s financial plan. But not every whole life policy is created equal.

Which Whole Life Insurance Company Do We Recommend?

Our Preference: Northwestern Mutual

When considering participating whole life insurance, Northwestern Mutual is our preferred company to evaluate first.

We value its longstanding dividend history, financial strength, contractual guarantees and approach to participating whole life insurance. Northwestern Mutual reports paying dividends every year since 1872, although future dividends are never guaranteed.

There’s just one thing: Rainbow’s Insurance cannot sell you a Northwestern Mutual policy directly. Northwestern Mutual distributes its whole life insurance through its own financial representatives. But that doesn’t stop us from recommending it.

If Northwestern Mutual is the best fit for your needs, we can connect you with a referral source who can help you explore their policies. We would rather send you to someone else for the right insurance than sell you something we believe is less appropriate simply because we receive a commission.

What About Penn Mutual?

Rainbow’s Insurance can also offer whole life insurance through Penn Mutual. Penn Mutual is an established mutual life insurance company offering participating whole life policies with guaranteed values, potential dividends and flexible policy designs.

However, based on our product preferences, Northwestern Mutual is generally our first choice when evaluating traditional participating whole life insurance. That doesn’t mean Penn Mutual is a bad company or that every Northwestern Mutual policy will outperform every Penn Mutual policy.

We would need to compare actual policy illustrations using the same age, health classification, premium commitment, death benefit objectives and time horizon to determine which policy is more appropriate.

If you prefer to purchase a Penn Mutual policy through Rainbow’s Insurance, we can help you evaluate that option. But we will not recommend Penn Mutual over Northwestern Mutual simply because Penn Mutual compensates us. That’s our philosophy in action.

Cash Value: Don’t Just Accumulate It. Understand How to Use It.

One of the reasons someone might choose whole life insurance is the ability to build cash value that isn’t directly tied to daily stock market performance. But we believe it’s important to understand how that cash value could serve you during your lifetime.

For some people, cash value can become a source of financial flexibility during retirement, unexpected expenses or periods when other investments have declined.

What Happens When the Stock Market Falls?

Imagine you’re retired and withdrawing money from your investment portfolio to cover living expenses. Then the market falls significantly.

Selling investments during a downturn may mean selling more shares to generate the same amount of income, leaving fewer shares available to participate in a potential recovery. This is part of what’s known as sequence-of-returns risk.

A properly funded whole life policy with sufficient accessible cash value may provide an alternative source of funds. Instead of selling investments while they’re depressed, you might access policy cash value to help cover expenses. That could give your investments additional time to recover.

The objective isn’t to predict the stock market. It’s to create choices when the market isn’t cooperating.

Two Ways to Access Your Cash Value

1. Policy Loans

A policy loan allows you to borrow against the available cash value of your life insurance policy. Depending on the contract, you may be able to borrow funds without selling investments or surrendering the entire insurance policy.

For a policy that is not a Modified Endowment Contract (MEC), loans generally are not taxable when taken, provided the policy remains in force.

However, policy loans are not free money.

• Interest accrues on the outstanding loan.
• Unpaid interest may be added to the loan balance.
• Outstanding loans generally reduce the net death benefit.
• Loans may affect dividends and policy performance.
• Excessive borrowing can cause a policy to lapse and potentially trigger substantial taxes.

2. Partial Surrenders or Withdrawals

Some whole life policies allow you to access cash value by surrendering paid-up additions or using other partial withdrawal provisions. Unlike a loan, a partial surrender generally does not create an outstanding loan balance requiring repayment.

However, it permanently removes value from the policy unless additional coverage or value is subsequently purchased under available policy provisions. A partial surrender may:

• Reduce your death benefit.
• Reduce future cash-value growth.
• Affect future dividends.
• Create taxable income depending on the amount withdrawn, policy basis and tax classification.

A partial surrender is not simply a loan without interest. It changes the policy.

Using Cash Value During Down Markets

Consider a hypothetical example. You have a retirement portfolio invested in the financial markets and a whole life policy with accessible cash value. The market declines 25%. You need $30,000 for living expenses.

Instead of immediately selling investments at depressed prices, you evaluate whether borrowing $30,000 against your whole life policy would be appropriate. If your investments subsequently recover and your financial circumstances permit, you may choose to repay the policy loan, including interest, restoring the net policy values affected by the outstanding loan.

But there are important considerations.

• The market may not recover quickly. A loan could remain outstanding for years.
• The loan has a cost. Even if the market eventually recovers, loan interest and changes to dividends may reduce or eliminate the financial advantage.
• Repayment must be planned. You should not assume future investment returns will be sufficient to repay the loan.

That’s why we believe this strategy should be evaluated before retirement, with careful attention to the policy’s actual loan provisions and the rest of your financial plan.

Should You Always Use Your Cash Value?

No.

Is Whole Life Insurance Right for Everyone?

Absolutely not.

Whole life insurance generally costs substantially more than Guaranteed Universal Life Insurance for the same initial death benefit. It may take years before accessible cash value becomes substantial relative to premiums paid.

If your primary need is affordable death-benefit protection, Guaranteed Universal Life (GUL) may be more appropriate. If you cannot comfortably maintain the premiums, whole life may not be a good fit.

Whole life insurance should be purchased because its combination of permanent protection, guarantees and financial flexibility meets a real need.

How We Structure Whole Life Insurance for Maximum Cash Value Accumulation

Not all whole life insurance policies are designed to accomplish the same goal. Some are structured to maximize the death benefit for a given premium. Others are designed to emphasize cash-value accumulation and access during your lifetime.

If accumulating cash value is your primary objective, we want to structure the policy accordingly.

Minimize the Insurance Cost. Maximize the Cash Value Potential.

One approach is to design the policy with a relatively low base whole life premium and direct additional premium dollars toward Paid-Up Additions (PUAs), subject to the insurance company’s rules and applicable tax limits.

Paid-up additions purchase additional fully paid-up life insurance. They can increase both the policy’s death benefit and its cash value. Depending on the carrier and contract, this approach may produce greater early cash value than a traditional whole life policy with the same total premium commitment.

The objective is to allocate premiums efficiently while maintaining the insurance protection and guarantees appropriate for your needs.

What Is a Modified Endowment Contract (MEC)?

The federal government places limits on how much premium can be paid into a life insurance policy relative to its death benefit and other contractual features.

Under Internal Revenue Code Section 7702A, a life insurance policy can become a Modified Endowment Contract (MEC) if it fails the applicable 7-pay test or becomes a MEC under other applicable rules.

A MEC is still life insurance, and its death benefit generally retains favorable federal income-tax treatment. However, accessing its cash value can become less tax-efficient. With a MEC:

• Withdrawals are generally taxed on an income-first basis, to the extent of taxable gain.
• Policy loans are generally treated as distributions for federal income-tax purposes.
• Taxable distributions may also be subject to a 10% additional federal tax before age 59½, unless an exception applies.

For clients who want to use cash value through policy loans or withdrawals during their lifetime, avoiding MEC classification may be an important design objective.

How Do We Avoid Creating a MEC?

We work with the insurance company to evaluate a policy design that emphasizes cash-value accumulation while remaining within the applicable tax limits. That may involve:

• Adjusting the base death benefit: Evaluating the appropriate amount of base insurance relative to the planned premiums.
• Using paid-up additions: Directing additional premiums toward paid-up insurance when the contract permits.
• Monitoring premium limits: Understanding how much premium can be paid without causing the policy to become a MEC.
• Reviewing future changes: Recognizing that reductions in benefits, material changes, additional premiums and other adjustments can affect MEC testing.

The goal is not simply to purchase the smallest possible death benefit. It’s to design the policy for efficient cash-value accumulation while preserving its intended life-insurance tax treatment.

Why Policy Design Matters

Two whole life policies from the same insurance company can produce significantly different cash-value results depending on how they’re structured. That’s why we don’t evaluate a policy based only on the company’s name or its illustrated dividend rate. We want to see:

• How much premium are you paying?
• How much cash value is available in the early years?
• How much is guaranteed versus projected?
• How flexible are your future premium payments?
• What happens if you need to stop funding the policy?
• How do policy loans affect cash value, dividends and death benefits?

And critically: Does the policy remain within the applicable MEC limits under the planned funding strategy?

Our Approach

If cash-value accumulation is your priority, we’ll help you evaluate a policy design that emphasizes that objective rather than automatically accepting a traditional death-benefit-focused illustration.

We’ll also explain the tradeoffs, including premium commitments, insurance costs, liquidity, loan interest and the difference between guaranteed and non-guaranteed values.

The goal isn’t simply to build cash value. It’s to build cash value efficiently, understand how to access it and preserve the protections you intended to purchase. And if a different financial product is better suited to your goals, we’ll tell you that, too.

What We Will Do — And What We Will Not Do

We will explain the guarantees. We will distinguish guaranteed cash values and death benefits from projected dividends and other non-guaranteed values.

We will compare actual policies. We will look at premiums, death benefits, guaranteed and projected cash values, policy loans, riders and long-term costs.

We will explain how to use the cash value. We will help you understand the opportunities, limitations and risks associated with loans and partial surrenders.

We will not recommend a company simply because it compensates us.

We will not present whole life insurance as a retirement account or promise that policy loans will outperform selling investments.

We will not tell you to replace existing coverage without first examining what you would be giving up.

And if the best solution is one we cannot sell, we’ll still tell you.

Interested in Whole Life Insurance?

Whether you’re considering a new policy, comparing Northwestern Mutual and Penn Mutual, or wondering how to use the cash value of an existing policy, Rainbow’s Insurance can help you understand your options.

We can also help you explore a referral to a Northwestern Mutual representative when appropriate.

Contact Rainbow’s Insurance for an honest conversation about whole life insurance.

If the best solution doesn’t pay us, we’ll still recommend it.

New York Residents: Were You Sold a Life Insurance Policy After February 1, 2020?

You may have grounds to seek financial compensation if your insurance policy was improperly recommended or sold.

On February 1, 2020, New York’s enhanced best-interest standard under Regulation 187 took effect for life insurance recommendations. Under this regulation, covered recommendations must be based on the consumer’s best interest, taking into account their financial circumstances, insurance needs, and objectives—not the producer’s financial incentives.

At Rainbow’s Insurance, there are certain insurance products we generally do not recommend or sell because we believe their complexity, costs, risks, or lack of meaningful guarantees can make them unsuitable for many consumers.

These include Indexed Universal Life (IUL), Variable Universal Life (VUL), and certain other cash-value-oriented life insurance policies, particularly when marketed primarily as retirement accumulation or supplemental income strategies.

That does not mean these products are inherently improper or unsuitable for everyone. It does mean that their recommendations deserve careful examination.

If you purchased one of these policies in New York on or after February 1, 2020, we encourage you to contact Rainbow’s Insurance for an independent review.

We can help examine whether:

• The policy was suitable for your actual insurance needs, financial circumstances, and objectives.
• Its costs, nonguaranteed elements, and potential lapse risks were adequately explained.
• Illustrations or projected retirement income were presented in a misleading manner.
• The recommendation appropriately considered relevant alternatives.
• The recommendation raises concerns under New York’s best-interest requirements.

Could You Be Entitled to Compensation?

If your policy was improperly recommended or sold, you may have legal grounds to pursue financial compensation.

Compensation is not automatic. Whether a legal claim exists depends on the facts, applicable law, and evidence of wrongdoing and resulting harm.

Rainbow’s Insurance provides insurance education and policy analysis, not legal representation. When a review identifies potential concerns, we may recommend that you consult a qualified New York attorney to evaluate your legal options.

Request an Independent Policy Review

You deserve to understand what you purchased, what was guaranteed, what was not guaranteed, and whether the recommendation was appropriate for you.

If you purchased a life insurance policy in New York on or after February 1, 2020, and have concerns about how it was recommended or sold, contact Rainbow’s Insurance for an independent review.

Call Rainbow: (708) 571-2279
Email: RainbowWilsonJonKite@gmail.com

Insurance services and policy reviews are subject to applicable state licensing requirements. Rainbow’s Insurance does not provide legal advice or guarantee financial compensation.