Understanding Policies

Your whole life policies are the foundation of your banking system. Policy Stack tracks them as living records that grow and change over time. Term and convertible-term policies are also supported as part of the broader insurance picture, with a different (and lighter) record because they have no cash value to track.

The Add Policy Wizard Starts with a Type Picker

The first step of Add Policy is a policy-type picker with three choices:

• Whole Life — permanent coverage with cash value. The core of a whole life banking system. Routes through the full wizard (details → spec page → history → current snapshot → summary).
• Term Life — temporary coverage for a fixed period. No cash value, no policy loans, no snapshots. Routes through a single term-details step that captures the carrier, policy number, term length, expiration date, and annual premium.
• Convertible Term Life — term coverage with the option to convert to a whole life policy later. Same term-details capture plus the conversion window (end date) and a conversion status.

The rest of this article — and most of the Policies section — focuses on whole life, because that's where the banking system mechanics live. Term and convertible-term policies are recorded for completeness (carrier visibility, death benefit visibility, conversion tracking) but they don't have snapshots, cash value, or loans.

What Is a Whole Life Policy?

A whole life insurance policy is a permanent life insurance contract issued by a carrier. It provides a guaranteed death benefit and builds cash value over the life of the policy. When issued by a mutual insurance company, the policyholder participates in the company's divisible surplus through dividends.

In the context of your banking system, your policies serve as the warehouse for your capital. The cash value is the pool of capital available for policy loans and deployments.

Policy Types in Policy Stack

Policy Stack tracks the following policy types:

• Traditional Whole Life — a standard participating whole life policy from a mutual carrier
• Paid-Up Additions (PUA) Rider — an additional rider that allows you to purchase paid-up insurance above the base premium, accelerating cash value growth
• Term Rider — a term insurance rider that can be attached to a whole life policy, often used to increase early death benefit while keeping the policy below the MEC limit

What Policy Stack Records

For each policy, Policy Stack tracks:

• Basic information — policy number, carrier, insured, issue date, and status
• Policy structure details — base premium, PUA rider amount, term rider amount, payment frequency, and riders
• Snapshots — point-in-time records of cash value, death benefit, and loan balance from carrier statements
• Policy loans — loans taken against the cash value
• Linked deployments — capital deployments funded by loans from this policy
• Chart color — the saved line color used by charts and legends that display individual policy series

Policy Status

Each policy has a status that reflects its current state:

• Active — the policy is in force and premiums are being paid
• Paid-Up — all required premiums have been paid; the policy remains in force with no further premium obligation
• Reduced Paid-Up — the policy has been converted to a reduced paid-up state

Policy Chart Colors

Each policy can have a saved chart color. The color appears as a small pill on policy cards and in charts that display separate policy series, making multi-policy views easier to scan without changing the underlying data.

Open the policy color picker from the policy card or the policy detail page to choose a preset or custom color. The color is visual identification only; it does not indicate performance, status, or priority.