CHAPTER 6
The Evolution of Cash Value Life Insurance
T
he Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘evolution’ as “the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form.” I equate that to PROGRESS! This process is typically subtle, slow, and sometimes barely recognizable until one day, someone notices the dramatic change with the exclamation, “why did no one else ever think of that?” Because evolution progresses from A to B to C and so on; it cannot go from A directly to Z. Evolution is a sequence of tiny improvements that lead to profound results, similar to the way money compounds. The landline had to be invented, developed, and improved before creating new technology that led to pagers. Long before the iPhone arrived in 2007, the early pioneers carried the Nokia brick. After the brick came a compact flip phone followed by the technologically advanced Blackberry. Each phase required building upon the success and innovation of the previous phase in order to deliver what had previously been unimaginable. Evolution is happening all the time in every aspect of society, and each of these aspects evolves at different rates; this holds for financial services, too. The results of these evolutions have a tremendous advantage over the outdated past that they have replaced, especially when the old is subpar. Social media influencer Jay Shetty asserted that seven words have the power to ruin everything: “We have always done it that way!” Einstein once commented that “great minds have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds,” a commentary on the way people 69