Protective Life Insurance Company Introduces Protective Indexed Annuity

Protective Life Insurance Company today announced the release of the Protective Indexed Annuity. The annuity includes a range of withdrawal charge schedules and three interest crediting strategies to help customers grow contract value over time. It also has available principal protection.

“Less-than-favorable market conditions have consumers looking for low risk investment options which offer better returns than are available in some financial products,” said Carolyn Johnson, chief operating officer for Protective Life. “With its collection of unique features, the Protective Indexed Annuity fills that need.”

Along with a fixed interest crediting strategy, the Protective Indexed Annuity offers two indexed interest crediting strategies, annual point-to-point and annual tiered rate. The latter credits an industry-unique interest rate enhancement when index performance meets or exceeds a pre-determined performance tier.
The product also offers the flexibility to access contract value for unforeseen circumstances, such as unemployment, terminal illness and nursing home confinement.

“Consumers know they need to invest their money to protect their financial tomorrow, but the low interest rate environment combined with the risk associated with stock market investment have led them to reconsider their choices,” Johnson said. “The Protective Indexed Annuity provides customers comfort by knowing that they are protected from the downside, but given the opportunity for a higher rate of return, all with an optional return of premium benefit.”

Life Fitness Unveils New Color Options for Cardio Equipment, Allowing Facilities to Visually Differentiate Exercise Spaces

Life Fitness, the global leader in commercial fitness equipment manufacturing, introduces new colors for the next generation of the Elevation™ Series Treadmills, Cross-Trainers and Lifecyle™ Exercise Bikes with Discover™ Tablet Consoles. As demand for customization within the industry grows, these new color choices allow facilities to further differentiate themselves and offer exercisers a unique experience. The Elevation Series colors, which now include Arctic Silver, Titanium Storm, Black Onyx and Diamond White, can complement the tone of a facility and provide a fresh feel.

The new Discover SE and Discover SI Tablet Consoles are the first to sync with the Android mobile devices, in addition to Apple iOS, and feature an ultra-responsive touch screen with Swipe™ Technology for superior navigation and a more personalized experience.

Discover cardio products integrate with Life Fitness' new LFconnect™ technology, a cloud-based solution that allows facility owners and managers to customize available content to exercisers and enables free asset management. LFconnect also gives exercisers log-in capabilities, personalization options and workout recommendations, made popular by the original Life Fitness Virtual Trainer website. With LFconnect, exercisers will be able to access personal online content and navigate the web directly from the equipment, as well as create their own workout programs and set content preferences.

"Our research indicates that more than 95 percent of exercisers desire access to online content on equipment," said Dan Wille, vice president of global marketing and product development for Life Fitness. "This new line of Discover open platform products gives exercisers unprecedented access to not just online content like YouTube and Facebook, but the latest fitness applications and custom entertainment. At the same time, these products offer expanded personalization options for facilities, allowing them to customize the products and enhance the exercise space."

Life Science Research Tools Market Size, Growth and Trends 2006-2016

This report provides an overview of the life sciences research tools market from 2006 to 2016. Life sciences research tools companies offer instruments, reagents and services to scientists in academic, BioPharma and applied market laboratories. Top vendors include Agilent, Bio-Rad, EMD Millipore, Life Technologies (Invitrogen / Applied Biosystems), Roche, Sigma-Aldrich and Thermo Fisher; smaller emerging players are highlighted as well (e.g., genomics players [Fluidigm, Raindance, Oxford Nanopore, NABSys, GnuBio]). Segmenting the market by technology, we estimate that the life science research tools market reached $37.4B in 2011, and is expected to grow -4% p.a. in the next 5 years.

Many reports on individual technologies report bullish growth rates of 5%-20% for Academic, BioPharma and Applied market customers (and excluding in vitro diagnostics). While our analysis confirms that applied market might experience double digit growth for many technologies, current market size estimates for these customers do not support an overall market growth of 10% for the overall life science research tools sector. This is especially true in light of the current global economic slowdown (including in India and China) and continued sovereign-debt crisis in Europe. A review of public fillings and guidance from the top players in this space -as well as an analysis of the funding reality in Academia and BioPharma- confirms this outlook.

This report evaluates which technologies are expected to capture and loose market share in this mid-single digit growth rate market. In this second edition, we updated our analysis to reflect the most current market sales and trends in 5 broad segments:

1) Pure genomics technologies: qPCR, next generation sequencing (NGS) / third generation sequencing (3GS), microarrays, PCR, CE sequencing, molecular biology tools, digital PCR;

2) Pure proteomics technologies: protein isolation and analysis, ELISA, protein production, western blots and protein microarrays;

3) Cell biology technologies: discovery services, basic cell biology reagents, flow cytometry, transfection and electroporation, media and sera, microscopy, cell culture equipment, whole cell analysis, cells and tissues, high content imaging;

4) Other analytical technologies: liquid chromatography, mass spectroscopy, structural analysis methods, in vivo study, spectroscopy, multiplex technologies, label free technologies;

5) Other supplies and technologies: lab supplies and disposables, glassware, automation, sample preparation, LIMS, magnetic beads. For each of these 35 subsegments, we present an analysis detailing sales of instruments and reagents for 2006, 2011 and 2016.

In addition, we detail market drivers and moderators, market trends, a high level end-customer breakdown (Academic, BioPharma and Applied markets customers) and key competitors. Many of these technologies are increasingly used for clinical diagnostics purposes. Therefore, we briefly cover the size, growth and trends of the in vitro diagnostics and molecular diagnostics markets. All data are based on manufacturer sales as publically reported and interviews with life sciences experts in academic, BioPharma and applied market laboratories.

Mars Announcement Raises Question: What Is Life?

NASA officials announced March 12 that ancient Mars could have supported primitive life. But this begs the question: What exactly constitutes life?

Merriam-Webster.com defines life as "an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli and reproduction." But there's no single satisfactory definition of life.

"I think it is a mistake to try to define life, because we have only one example of life, familiar life on Earth, and we have reason to believe that this example may be unrepresentative of life in general," Carol Cleland, a philosopher of science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told LiveScience in an email.

Defining life
Aristotle made the first attempt at a definition, describing life as something that grows, maintains itself and reproduces. But this definition would exclude mules, which are sterile, while including things like fire.
Calling life something that has a metabolism, the ability to take in energy to grow or move and excrete waste, is no good either; cars do this, for example.

In 1944, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger gave life a definition based on the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy, or disorder, of a closed system increases over time. Schrödinger defined life as something that decreases or maintains its entropy. Yet this definition fails because it includes crystals, which resist entropy by forming highly structured lattices.

Trying to define life by its qualities is the wrong approach, Cleland said. As an example, she cites scientists' early attempts to define water in terms of properties like being wet, transparent and a good solvent. "We didn't 'define' water as H2O, but rather discovered, in the context of molecular theory, that it is a chemical substance composed mostly of H2O molecules," Cleland said.

Life on Earth is typically divided into two main groups: the cellular life forms, which include archaea, bacteria and eukarya (all the plants and animals), and non-cellular life forms, like viruses. Whether viruses, which can replicate only inside the cells of a host organism, count as "life" is debated.

Life in the universe
Finding an airtight definition for life may not be so important, astrobiologist Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in California wrote in an email to LiveScience. It's "much better to have an idea of what life is built of," McKay said. "Life is built of complex, organic molecules."

Characterizing life is vital for identifying it elsewhere in the universe, a possibility now beyond the realm of science fiction. McKay said that if life exists somewhere else, it would be a material system evolving through reproduction, mutation and natural selection.

Beyond Earth, one of the first places humans have sought to find life is Mars. The Viking Mission in the 1970s looked for evidence of life in the Martian soil. One experiment appeared to find evidence of metabolic reactions, but these were dismissed as coming from a non-living source (though some still debate those results).

With the announcement that NASA's Curiosity rover has found evidence that life could have once existed on Mars, Curiosity has answered the question it set out to study in November 2011. The finding comes just seven months after the rover landed on the Red Planet on Aug. 5, 2012.
Given that Mars could have supported life, McKay said, "Now we need to look for it."

Alien Life May Be Rare Across the Universe

When it comes to life across the cosmos, the universe might just be an "awful waste of space" after all.

A new theory presented at a conference this week would confirm the worry of Ellie Arroway, Jodie Foster's character in the film "Contact," that life might not exist on other worlds.

Some scientists think that just because exoplanets could have habitable environments, that does not mean that life evolved there.

"The pervasive nature of life on Earth is leading us to make this assumption," Charles Cockell, the director of the U.K. Center for Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement."On our planet, carbon leaches into most habitat space and provides energy for microorganisms to live. There are only a few vacant habitats that may persist for any length of time on Earth, but we cannot assume that this is the case on other planets."

Cockell's hypothesis states that, although habitable alien planets might abound in solar systems around the universe, it does not mean these locales harbor extraterrestrial life.

"It is dangerous to assume life is common across the universe. It encourages people to think that not finding signs of life is a 'failure,' when in fact it would tell us a lot about the origins of life," added Cockell.
It is also possible that scientists will not be able to detect alien signs of life, even if it exists, Cockell said. Life might be markedly dissimilar from planet to planet, making it unlikely that astronomers on Earth will see recognizable signatures of life. But not all hope is lost.

"Professor Cockell explains that in coming decades, increasingly powerful telescopes and developments in spectroscopy may allow us to look for the signals of life on planets beyond our solar system," officials from the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's national academy of science, said in a statement."However, regardless of this, our view is still going to be heavily influenced by our knowledge of life on Earth."

Life Insurance Brokerage Trusted Quote Commemorates International Women’s Day

Trusted Quote, a top national brokerage of insurance products for life, long-term care, vision, and dental, will commemorate International Women’s Day on Friday, March 8th. This holiday, celebrated worldwide since 1911, raises awareness for women’s issues across the globe.

In the U.S., International Women’s Day often raises issues of economic insecurity. According to the Department of Labor, women account for 47% of the total U.S. workforce, but many of those women undervalue their contributions to their families, both in money and time spent as a caretaker, which can have disastrous consequences for the family should something happen to her.

Life insurance protects the financial contributions a woman makes to her family, yet few women have it. According to LIMRA, a leading financial research institution, 70% of women agree that life insurance is a necessity, yet 43% have no coverage at all. The statistics are worse for married women. LIMRA notes that 33% of wives have no life insurance, despite the fact that 70% of households are dual-income and 30% of wives earn more than their husbands.

Nancy Pinney, Chief Operations Officer for Trusted Quote, urges families to consider women’s contributions to their homes, especially in light of International Women’s Day. “It’s a tragedy when a family member dies, but especially so when their death means that the temporal needs of the family will be left unmet. Life insurance can meet those needs and provide the resources to pay for a home and caretaker for the family. Unfortunately, many families fail to consider the financial and other contributions of women,” says Pinney.

To commemorate International Women’s Day, Trusted Quote will release social media & blog posts focused on women and their achievements. The company’s goal is to educate the public on the importance of life insurance for women. By providing tools to help compare and select affordable life insurance policies, Trusted Quote hopes to increase the number of women who have protected their families against future economic uncertainty.

Does Your Kid Need Juvenile Life Insurance?

You may need life insurance after getting married or having a child, but do you need it from the day you're born? Advocates of juvenile life insurance say "yes" and hail the policies as financial planning essentials, while critics argue they're a waste of money.

Just like grown-up life insurance, two types of policies are available for kids: juvenile term insurance, which provides coverage until age 23 or 25 and offers the family a death benefit to cover unexpected funeral expenses for the child; and juvenile permanent insurance, which includes both a death benefit and a savings reserve that builds "cash value" as the child ages. Here's what a family needs to know.

Child death benefit pros and cons
Companies offering juvenile term life insurance talk about how the policies can provide a family with "peace of mind" by offering financial assistance -- namely, a death benefit -- "if the worst were to happen" to the child.

Juvenile term policies are sold on the idea that the death benefit is not designed to replace income, as it would be for an adult, but instead is geared toward covering burial and funeral costs if a child passes away.

Pros: Funerals are expensive. According to the most recent survey by the National Funeral Directors Association, the average cost is about $4,300, and that doesn't even include casket and cemetery expenses.

Cons: Chances are remote that a parent would ever need to pay for a child's funeral. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that only 0.03% of U.S. children die between the ages of 1 and 4. And then, for children ages 5 through 14, that mortality rate drops by about half.

Since the death of a child is so unlikely, purchasing juvenile life insurance strictly to cover potential funeral costs is "very short-term thinking," says J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
If families are concerned about covering unexpected funeral costs, Hunter says, they'd be better off creating a college savings fund and pulling from that if needed, rather than purchasing a juvenile life insurance policy.

Savings component pros and cons
The real advantage of a juvenile life policy is for saving, says Jack Dolan, spokesman for the American Council of Life Insurers, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group.

"What we see more clearly year after year is that the savings in a cash-value life insurance policy provide a good, solid return. And, particularly when you're in a low-interest-rate environment, it becomes an attractive means of saving," he says.

Pros: Dolan points out that the insurance plans offer tax-deferred growth, and many come with guaranteed returns, meaning your money will increase regardless of what happens in the financial markets as long as you keep making premium payments.

Unlike money kept in other savings vehicles for children, such as 529 college savings plans and Coverdell Education Savings Accounts, a juvenile life insurance policy's cash value doesn't have to be used solely for education but can be used by a grown child for other purposes, such as wedding expenses or to launch a business.

An added bonus is that children who have permanent, cash-value life insurance won't have to worry about qualifying for a policy as an adult, adds James Garfinkel, the founder and CEO of New York-based New Amsterdam Life and a director of the nonprofit Juvenile Life Insurance Foundation.

"(Juvenile insurance) guarantees the future insurability of the child, regardless of their future health, lifestyle or residence," Garfinkel says. "It's issued without any physical exam whatsoever."

Cons: Cash-value life insurance comes with fees, service charges and commissions that can prevent a policy from generating any actual returns for at least a decade, acknowledges Garfinkel. He says the rewards come over the long haul.

Hunter says the fee structure of juvenile policies makes it difficult to understand what a child's policy is really worth.

"It's much better to put money in some kind of an investment account to build to college years," he says. "It's much more understandable. It's much more transparent."

If putting money aside for college is indeed the goal, 529 prepaid tuition and college savings plans can generate returns more quickly than juvenile life insurance, and some of those plans offer state tax incentives or matching grant money that isn't available with the insurance policies.

Sun Life Financial Offers Group Dental with United Concordia Alliance Network

The Employee Benefits Group of the U.S. business group of Sun Life Financial Inc. (NYSE: SLF, TSX: SLF) today announced that Sun Life’s Group Dental plans now provide access to the United Concordia® Alliance network. Available to customers as of March 1, 2013, the arrangement provides 27%1 more dental provider access points to Sun Life dental customers than the Advantage Plus Network, which the new arrangement replaces.

Sun Life Dental offers dental PPO plans in all states, with coverage for employees and dependents. Employers can customize many plan features, including deductibles, benefit waiting periods, coinsurance levels, and plan maximums. Optional benefits include built-in routine care, orthodontia for children and adults, and an annual maximum rollover benefit. Fully-insured plans can be structured as 100% employer-paid, 100% employee-paid (“voluntary”), or as a shared-funding model (“contributory”).

Administrative Services are available to employer groups who prefer to self-fund their dental plans. Two plans can be offered for a Dual Select, or “high-low” plan design, providing employees greater choice.1
In July 2011, Sun Life entered an agreement with United Concordia that provided access to the Advantage Plus dental PPO network. Sun Life Dental plans will now be sold with United Concordia’s Alliance PPO network, which boasts 96,000 providers at over 246,000 access points across the country.

“Sun Life is a leader in disability insurance and is committed to the full array of employee benefits. We’ve provided group dental plans in the U.S. for over 20 years. We’ve thoughtfully and deliberately worked to grow our dental block with smart product development,” said Michael E. Shunney, Senior Vice President Distribution, Sun Life Financial U.S. “Our partnership with United Concordia is helping us take our dental offerings to the next level. The continued growth of their PPO network is a great win for us and for our customers.”

Sun Life provides Group Life, Disability, Dental, and Medical Stop-Loss insurance to over 33,000 U.S. customers, protecting over 10 million employees and their dependents, with $2 billion of in-force business. For more on Sun Life, visit www.sunlife.com/us.

Alliance Network applies only to dental plans underwritten by Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada and Sun Life Insurance and Annuity Company of New York. Excludes plans underwritten by Sun Life and Health Insurance Company U.S. The network is made available through an agreement with United Concordia Companies, Inc. Claims administration services are provided by United Concordia Companies, Inc. and regulations. Group insurance policies are underwritten by Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada (Wellesley Hills, MA) in all states, except New York, under Policy Form Series GP-A and GC-A. In New York, group insurance policies are underwritten by Sun Life Insurance and Annuity Company of New York (New York, NY) under Policy Form Series GP-A and GC-A. Product offerings may not be available in all states and may vary depending on state laws and regulations.

Spanish have highest healthy life expectancy in Europe

They may be out of work and struggling with financial disaster, but the Spanish have the highest healthy life expectancy in Europe – and beat Australia, Canada, Norway and the USA as well.

Spain has an excellent healthcare system, ranked seventh in 2000 on the only occasion the World Health Organisation has compiled a league table. The UK was 18th. But it is not just the structures or even the skills of the doctors that matter. It is also the state of health of the people who arrive in the clinics.

Maybe the Mediterranean diet, heavy on fruit, salads, fish and olive oil, is responsible for the low death rate from heart disease – Spain has the 3rd lowest level of years of life lost. It also does well on a number of cancers – pancreatic, prostate, breast and oesophageal. Families still care for ailing relatives – taking daily meals to those in hospital is normal and premature deaths from falls are low.

Life insurance from marriage into midlife

Sliding out of your 20s and into your 30s means you're probably about to face some serious life changes. For many people, the next couple of decades are a time to focus on family, whether that means starting a new one or expanding the one you already have.

As your life moves on, your life insurance needs will, too. Here are the life insurance issues you may encounter at the mile markers people reach in their 30s and 40s.

Parenthood
As you add members to your clan, you'll also need to add life insurance to ensure your babies are taken care of if something happens to you or your spouse. For new parents, figuring out how much coverage you'll need isn't easy and means figuring what your family's future costs might be, says Glenn E. Stevick Jr., an adjunct professor of insurance at The American College in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

"When (new parents) think about life insurance, most people kind of focus on what we call 'final expenses.' What does it take to bury me or cremate me, pay off my debts, and so on?" he explains.

But what parents typically forget, he says, are the major bills the family will encounter in the future, such as the cost of sending the children to college. You need enough life insurance so the family would be able to cover these sorts of expenses if a breadwinner dies.

Most new parents in their 30s will need "somewhere between 15 to 20 times their income" in life insurance coverage, says Onofrio Cirianni, a partner with New York-based EisnerAmper Financial and Insurance Services LLC. People in their 40s will need 10 to 15 times their income, he says.

Employers provide many families with a head start toward their life insurance needs. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 73 percent of full-time workers in the private sector are eligible for some life insurance benefits through their company.

To do a comprehensive analysis of your family's potential expenses in the future and determine how much coverage you need beyond your employer-sponsored life insurance, Cirianni recommends enlisting the help of an insurance agent or financial planner.

Remarriage
Most people get married in their 20s, but it's not uncommon to walk down the aisle again in your 30s or later. A survey released in 2011 by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the median age for second marriage is about 36 for men and 33 for women.

Life insurance needs are different for those in second marriages, especially when stepchildren are involved, says Sonali Virendra, a vice president with New York Life Insurance Co. In addition to examining each spouse's income, assets and debts, couples also must factor in alimony and child support payments they may be making or receiving, and coordinate with their exes to ensure that all children are adequately covered.

"If you have a family that's now a blended family, you need to now redo (a life insurance analysis) you may have already done in the past," Virendra notes.

Aging
Another major life insurance concern facing those in their 30s and 40s is time. Those who are eyeing life insurance, whether to cover a new baby or protect a new spouse, should do so as soon as possible to get the best rates, says Cirianni.

"Unlike investing, insurance always requires someone to be underwritten, and you have to qualify for it," he explains. "There's no better time to look at what amount of coverages you're eligible for than when you're young and healthy."

In most cases, life insurance premiums rise steadily as policyholders age. Plus, the older you get, the more likely you are to develop a condition that could spike your premiums dramatically or even render you ineligible for life insurance altogether, Cirianni says. Conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure, cardiovascular issues, high cholesterol and abnormal liver function can increase your insurance rates by up to 50 percent.

"It's really unfortunate because where there may have been an opportunity to set up coverage earlier in life, they (now) may be stuck with a higher premium," he says.

To sidestep higher life insurance charges as you progress through your 40s and 50s, Cirianni says to start the needs-analysis process early and maintain healthy habits.