The Cash Value Projector models cash value growth from a carrier illustration — separating base and PUA contributions year by year and tracking how close you are to the MEC limit.
Launch status: Coming soon for consumers. The walkthrough below describes preview behavior and may change before public launch.
What the Cash Value Projector Does
When you receive a carrier illustration, the ledger shows projected cash values year by year. But it does not always make clear what is driving the growth — how much comes from guaranteed interest, how much from dividends, and how the PUA rider is compounding. The Cash Value Projector breaks this down and lets you adjust assumptions to see how sensitive the projection is to changes in the dividend scale.
Common uses:
- Inspect a new illustration — upload a carrier illustration and explore its modeled growth pattern
- Model PUA capacity — see how much PUA headroom you have before reaching the MEC limit
- Compare scenarios — adjust the assumed dividend rate to see a range of possible outcomes
- Understand your existing policy — upload your current illustration to visualize your own policy's structure
How to Use the Cash Value Projector
- Navigate to Tools — click Tools in the sidebar, then select Cash Value Projector
- Load illustration data — upload a carrier illustration PDF for automatic extraction, or click Enter Manually to type in values directly
- Review the extracted values — verify the face amount, total premium, PUA amount, and year-by-year schedule match your paper illustration. Correct any extraction errors.
- Check the premium split — confirm the base-to-PUA split shown matches your illustration (e.g., $300 base / $700 PUA on a $1,000 total premium)
- Adjust the dividend rate — the tool infers a dividend rate from the illustration's projected values. You can adjust this to run conservative or optimistic scenarios.
- Review the year-by-year chart — see cash value, death benefit, and PUA capacity projected through the paid-up age
- Monitor the MEC indicator — a running bar shows your cumulative premium vs. the MEC limit. A warning appears if your PUA contributions approach the limit.
What the Results Show
Cash Value Projection
A year-by-year chart and table showing:
- Total cash value — the sum of base policy cash value and accumulated PUA
- Base policy cash value — growing from guaranteed interest and your allocated share of dividends
- PUA cash value — accumulated from PUA rider payments and from dividends reinvested as additional PUAs
- Growth rate — the implied annual growth rate of your total cash value
Death Benefit Trajectory
How your total death benefit evolves over the policy's life. In a well-designed whole life banking policy, the death benefit grows substantially over time as PUA purchases add permanent coverage each year. The chart shows:
- Base face amount — fixed at policy issue
- PUA accumulation — growing as each year's PUA purchases add permanent death benefit
- Term rider — shown separately if present; this component typically decreases over time as the PUA-funded permanent benefit grows
MEC Limit Tracking
The MEC (Modified Endowment Contract) limit is the maximum cumulative premium you can pay over the first 7 years without triggering MEC status. Exceeding it changes the tax treatment of policy loans and withdrawals.
The projector shows:
- MEC limit — the 7-pay test threshold for your specific policy (face amount and issue age determine this)
- Cumulative premium — your running total of premium paid each year
- Headroom — how much more premium you could pay before reaching the limit
- Warning indicator — appears when cumulative premium approaches the MEC limit, or if the projection shows the limit would be exceeded
The MEC calculations shown are approximations based on the 7-pay test. Your carrier performs the official monthly MEC test according to IRC § 7702A. Always verify MEC limits with your carrier before making additional PUA contributions outside your scheduled premium.
Premium Breakdown
A stacked view of where each dollar of premium goes:
- Base premium — funding the guaranteed whole life death benefit and cash value guarantee
- PUA rider premium — purchasing paid-up additions; immediately converts to cash value and death benefit
- Term rider premium — funding the temporary term insurance component (if applicable)
Growth Rate Analysis
The projector derives an implied dividend rate from the illustration's projected values. This shows you the dividend assumption baked into the illustration — useful for comparing illustrations from different carriers on equal terms. Lower-rate assumptions are more conservative; higher-rate assumptions require stronger carrier dividend performance.
Document Extraction
Upload a carrier illustration PDF and the tool extracts the year-by-year ledger automatically. Supported fields:
- Face amount and initial death benefit
- Annual premium and PUA amounts
- Year-by-year cash value and death benefit schedule
- Premium paid-to age and term rider details
After extraction, compare the imported values to a row in the middle of your illustration — for example, year 10 — to verify the extraction captured the scale correctly. Some carriers format their PDFs differently, and an off-by-one on a column can shift all extracted values.
All projections are labeled "Modeled · Illustrative · Not recorded." Actual performance depends on the carrier's future dividend scale, which is not guaranteed.