Pacific Life Insurance Company Review
The California-based Pacific Life offers a number of retirement and financial planning services. In addition to annuities and life insurance the company also offers mutual funds and 529 college savings plans. A variety of products for small business are also available. As with most insurers, Pacific Life makes its products available through agents and does not sell directly to the public.
Pacific Life was organized in Sacramento in 1868 as Pacific Mutual. Its offices moved to San Francisco in 1881 and Los Angeles in 1906. The company is currently based in Newport Beach in Orange County. It organized the PIMCO investment company as a subsidiary in 1970 but most of PIMCO was sold to Allianz in 2000.
Although the company's operations are still centered in California, it is currently legally headquartered in Nebraska. It is also a major player in the aircraft leasing and reinsurance businesses and in 2008 entered the British market by buying Scottish Re Group's reinsurance business.
On April 7, 2011, Pacific Life announced that it had become the #1 seller of indexed universal life insurance for the second year in a row. A press release stated that the LIMRA International Sales Survey had made this determination. The insurer also announced that its Pacific Indexed Accumulator III and Indexed Pacific Estate Preserver were the #1 and #2 indexed universal polices in the US.
Pacific Life Financial Planning Resources
Like many insurers, Pacific Life is now putting a strong emphasis on financial planning. In addition to annuities it now offers mutual fund and some other financial planning tools.
The retirement planning section of its website places a strong emphasis on variable and fixed annuities and variable life insurance. Planning guides are also available but these seem to be promotional materials for the company's annuity products. Tools available include an IRA calculator, a Roth IRA calculator, and annuity calculators.
Links to educational materials about some of the products are available. As is to be expected these materials are heavily slanted towards Pacific's products. For some reason the company is placing a strong emphasis on dollar cost averaging which indicates that it is focusing on deferred annuity sales. This is an investment strategy in which a person always buys the same amount of an instrument over time.
A life and estate planning guide is also available and as to be expected this emphasizes the company's variable and traditional life insurance and annuities. A variety of articles and educational materials are also available as well. These provide limited information and should not be relied upon as a comprehensive financial planning resource.
Pacific Life Products
One good feature that the company's website provides is pages showing all of its life insurance products. Some other insurers do a poor job of listing and describing their offerings online. Although it does not sell directly to the public, at least Pacific Life details its policies.
Client guides for all of the policies and prospectuses for a limited number of them are available. Client guides include a good overview of the products including the very popular Estate Preserver line of indexed universal life policies. An interesting feature of the Estate Preserver includes the ability to split the plan into two polices in case of divorce. It should be noted that the company itself does not call these indexed universal life insurance policies even though that is how industry groups describe them.
An individual 401(k) program for small business owners and self-employed persons is now available through Pacific Life. Called the Individual(k) program this is available to persons involved in a partnership, corporation, or sole proprietorship. The plans are also available to spouses. It should be noted that spouses with IRAs of their own may not be able to participate.
According to the prospectus, the Individual(k) offers those with an existing IRA the ability to make a one time contribution of up to $16,500 to a Roth 401(k) with a 25% employer match and a $5,500 a year catch up contribution. The total contribution available is up to $49,000. Rollovers are allowed for this plan.
Presumably contributions to this plan would be invested in Pacific Life's products. Persons who exceed the limits on contributions to such a plan could presumably roll them over into an annuity and maintain the tax-deferred status.
Pacific Life also maintains its own small family of mutual funds. Pacific Life formed the well-respected funds manager PIMCO, but sold the majority of that company to Allianz. In 2002 the company reentered the mutual fund field by organizing Pacific Life Funds. Currently only one fund the Pacific Income Fund is listed on the site. More details about the funds offered are not available.
Pacific Life is a good choice for those seeking basic life insurance. It would also be a good resource for self employed individuals such as writers, real estate agents, or small business owners that need to provide for their own retirement plans.