Arthur L. Williams, Jr., an insurance agent turned billionaire insurance executive, derived the term Universal Life Insurance in response to his dislike for some aspects of whole life insurance. He highlighted 2 difficulties in whole life insurance. First, the lack of flexibility wherein the owner is unable to make premium payments and cannot lower the death benefit because he does not need the same level of insurance anymore. Second, the owner sees whole life insurance as a ‘black box’, wherein he cannot see how it works. Questions such as, “what are the actual expenses this year?” or, “how much did the policy earn and where did it go?”, are common blind spots for them.
