INTRODUCTION

Your Job as Insurance Officer

As insurance officer, your job is to give help to members of your unit in life insurance matters. You probably are not an expert on insurance. You are not expected to be.

This handbook is designed to serve as a simplified reference and textbook on the essentials of each type of life insurance. If you acquaint yourself thoroughly with its contents, you will be equipped to counsel and guide on matters relating to life insurance. As a counselor, your function stops before a final decision on insurance is made by the individual being counseled. Your job is to see to it that the serviceman or servicewoman seeking your assistance has all of the facts he or she needs in reaching that decision. The insurance counselor is not an estate planner; you are expected to avoid influencing the ultimate decision-which must be reached by the person directly affected.

Those whom you counsel will fall into two groups. First are those with long service, who by April 1951 had been issued a Government life insuran policy. The Government life insurance discussion part I will be of particular interest to them. The ond group-now considerably larger than the firstwill be those persons who entered the Service after April 1951 and (except in cases involving disability separation) are not eligible for Government life insu

ance.

In deciding what sort of life insurance to purchas the serviceman will need to understand exactly how his personal situation will be affected now and in the future. He will have to realize that there are pitfal to be avoided as well as benefits to be achieved from an insurance program. If his plan is soundly based o certain principles that this guide sets forth, he will able to keep within the bounds of his income and enjoy the maximum financial security available to him Only careful planning can make a reasonable degree d financial security possible through purchase of life in

surance.

In helping to plan that security, the United States Government has established a number of program which make the achievement of that protection com siderably easier for Service personnel. Benefits available to members of the Armed Forces must, under all circumstances, be taken into consideration in planning any life insurance coverage.

Information Sources

As appendixes, this guide supplies two helpful toolsa list of selected references on life insurance to which both counselor and counseled can turn for additional guidance, and a glossary of terms used in the life insurance field.

Limits of Counseling

Even after the counselor has gone as far as the limi tations of his own knowledge and the information con tained in this guide permit, the serviceman may still find himself unable to reach a final decision. This is the point at which you, as his counselor, should con sider urging him to turn to other reputable sources of insurance advice.

Each of the Services has published a regulation dealing with life insurance that will further assist you as a counselor. They are concerned with the solicitation of life insurance (on military installations) and with the purchase of life insurance, and with

allotments from military pay for life insurance. They are identified as: Army-AR 210-8; Navy and Marine Corps-SECNAV INST 1740.1; Air Force AFR 211-16; and Coast Guard-Comdt. Inst. 1740.2.