When to run one
Annually is the conventional answer and it is fine as a floor. The reviews that actually change something are triggered by an event: a marriage, a divorce, a birth, a death in the family, a house, a business, a diagnosis, a job change, a term policy entering its final years, or a universal life policy whose statement has started to look different from the illustration it was sold on.
The checklist
The contract
- Carrier, product name and form number — the marketing name changes, the form number does not
- Policy date and issue date, and which of them the contract's clocks run from
- Face amount, and whether it is level, increasing or decreasing
- Policy type — term, whole life, universal life, indexed or variable
- For term: the level premium period, and the date it ends
- For term: whether it is convertible, and the exact conversion deadline
- Premium mode and amount, and whether the mode is costing the client a factor they did not choose
- Whether the policy is currently in force, in a grace period, or on a non-forfeiture option
The money
- Current cash value and current surrender value — they are not the same number
- Any outstanding policy loan, the balance, and the loan interest rate
- Whether loan interest is being paid or capitalised into the balance
- Dividend option in force, for participating policies
- For universal life: current credited rate against the rate the policy was illustrated at
- For universal life: current cost of insurance charges and how they have moved
- An in-force illustration at current assumptions, and the age the policy is projected to last to
- Whether the planned premium is still sufficient, or whether the policy is quietly consuming its own cash value
The people
- Primary beneficiary, spelled correctly and with the relationship stated
- Contingent beneficiary — the field most often left blank
- Percentages that total 100, per stirpes or per capita stated explicitly
- Any minor named directly, with no trust and no custodian arrangement
- Any ex-spouse still named, and whether a divorce decree requires them to be
- Any beneficiary who has died, moved, married or changed their name
- Owner and insured, where they differ, and whether the ownership arrangement still makes sense
- For business-owned policies: whether the entity still exists in the form named
The risk
- Every rider attached, by form number, not by marketing name
- Accelerated death benefit riders — terminal, chronic and critical illness — and whether the client knows they have them
- Waiver of premium, and its definition of disability
- Child and spouse riders, and whether the children are still children
- Any rider with its own expiry date, which is rarely the policy's
- Whether the risk class reflects a change worth re-underwriting for — a client who quit smoking is the common one
- Total coverage across all policies against current need, not the need at issue
The paperwork
- Current address, phone and email on file with the carrier, not only with you
- Whether the carrier has a current authorisation for you to service the policy
- Whether the client can actually find their policy documents, and where
- Whether anyone other than the client knows the policy exists
- Your own file: schedule page, most recent annual statement, and current beneficiary designation
The call that gets the meeting
The reason policy reviews do not happen is not that clients refuse them. It is that the request sounds like a sales call, because most of them are. The version that works leads with something the client gains and asks for nothing.
- Lead with a specific fact you already hold: the policy, the carrier, the year it was issued. Specificity is what separates you from a call centre in the first four seconds.
- Name the thing you want to check, and make it about them: whether the beneficiary details are still right, or whether they know about a benefit they already own.
- Say how long it takes, and mean it.
- Say explicitly that there is nothing to buy. If that is not true, do not say it.
- Offer two times rather than asking when suits — an open question makes a five-minute favour feel like a commitment.
What to do afterwards
- Send a short written summary of what was checked and what did not change. A review with no artefact is a review neither of you will remember happened.
- Submit any beneficiary change the same day. Intent is not a designation, and the gap between them is where the worst claims stories live.
- Record every deadline you found as a date in a system, not a note.
- Diary the next review before you hang up.
Briar holds the documents this checklist reads from and extracts most of it as typed fields — carrier, policy number, face amount, cash value, premium, riders and conversion deadline — so a review starts from a filled sheet rather than a blank one. It also flags the two silent triggers above without being asked.