Premium Finance
Premium Finance Placement
When the case is big enough to need premium finance, it's big enough to need someone who's done this before.
Premium finance isn't a product. It's a structure. And structures fail when the people building them don't understand every moving part: the loan, the collateral, the crediting strategy, the exit, and the carrier's appetite for all of it at once.
That's where we come in.
Drift & Compass works alongside producers, BGAs, and IMOs as an extension of your back office on premium finance cases, from the first feasibility conversation through funding and beyond. We're not here to sell you a lender or a carrier. We're here to make sure the case you're building actually holds up under underwriting scrutiny, lender requirements, and the client's real financial picture.
The ABCs of Premium Finance
A - The Arrangement
Premium finance lets a client fund a large life insurance policy, typically for estate liquidity, business succession, or key person protection, by borrowing the premium instead of paying it out of pocket. The policy's cash value and often outside collateral secure the loan. The client keeps liquid assets invested elsewhere while the death benefit and cash value build inside the policy.
B - The Balance
Every premium finance case is a balancing act between three parties with different priorities: the lender wants collateral coverage and creditworthy borrowers, the carrier wants a policy that performs and a client who can weather rate or collateral calls, and the client wants leverage without unmanageable risk. When any one of these is out of balance, the case stalls or collapses at underwriting, at the lender's desk, or years later at renewal.
C - The Collateral and the Crediting
The policy's illustrated performance has to be conservative enough to survive scrutiny and interest rate movement has to be modeled realistically, not best-case. Collateral requirements shift as rates move. A case built on optimistic assumptions is a case that generates a collateral call letter in year three.
How We Assist
Feasibility and Case Design
Before a case goes anywhere near an application, we look at whether premium finance is actually the right structure for this client, this carrier, this lender relationship. Not every large case belongs in a financed structure. We'll tell you when it doesn't.
Carrier and Lender Positioning
We know which carriers are actively competitive on premium finance business right now, which lenders are workable for a given collateral profile, and how to position a case so it reads as fundable and insurable from the first submission, not after three rounds of follow-up questions.
Underwriting Strategy
This is the core of what we do. Financial underwriting on premium finance cases carries its own scrutiny beyond medical, and we build the submission to anticipate it: net worth and income justification, existing coverage, the purpose of the death benefit, and how it all ties together in a way a underwriter can approve without a fight.
Coordination Between Moving Parts
Producer, carrier, lender, and often the client's CPA or attorney all need to be working from the same set of assumptions. We sit in the middle of that coordination so nothing falls through a gap between parties who each only see their piece of the case.
Ongoing Case Management
Premium finance doesn't end at policy delivery. Collateral requirements, rate resets, and loan renewals require monitoring long after the ink dries. We help producers keep these cases healthy for the life of the loan, not just through issue.