Living benefits describe benefits that make the insured the first beneficiary of the policy should they become terminally, critically, or chronically ill. Each carrier has specific nuances to this benefit and not all living benefits are created equal.

These are regular payments made to keep the policy active. With IULs you may also have flexibility, alowing your to hyper-fund your account for larger returns faster.

The participation rate is the percentage of the index's annual interest rate, that the carrier will credit you. For example: The annual interest rate is 7% and the carrier is offering a 200% participation; your applied interest credit would be 14% for hte year.

The cap rate is the maximum interest credit allowed by the carrier for a specific index. This means that if the index performs at a higher level than the cap rate, you will only receive the lower of the two.

The floor is the lowest amount of interest you can receive. Often, an IUL will have a zero percent floor. This means, when the market takes a downturn and has a loss, IUL policy holders will not be negatively affected and will keep all of their gains. Consequently, traditional investments would lose value or past gains in a downturned market.

This is the amount you are able to borrow from a IUL and the amount of cash available if you were to close the account. In a way, this is the "equity" in your account. This means, that even if the surrender amount is lower than the account value, you will still receive interest based on the full value of the account