August 7, 2026
3:24 pm

Can You Sell a Great West Life Indexed Universal Life Policy? (2026)

Two things need to be established before the usual indexed universal life analysis applies: who administers the policy now, and whether you are actually the owner. Both are unusually live questions on this carrier name.

Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company sold substantially all of its individual life insurance and annuity business to Protective Life through a reinsurance transaction that closed effective June 1, 2019, and the company was afterward renamed Empower Annuity Insurance Company of America. Your policy is in a closed block administered by a different organization than the one whose name is printed on it — and closed blocks behave differently from active ones in ways that matter directly to whether the contract survives.

The ownership question arises because Great-West’s individual life business was weighted toward bank-owned and corporate-owned life insurance and single premium life, not toward retail indexed universal life. If a policy insures you but was bought by an employer or a bank, you are the insured and not the owner, and you cannot sell it — the entity that owns it can, subject to its own rules.

Sort out both, then work through the mechanics below.

In This Article

Who holds the block, and what a closed block means
Are you the owner, or only the insured?
How indexed crediting works, and where it disappoints
Cost of insurance drag and the illustration rules that came too late
The documents that settle the question
Sell, reduce, surrender, or keep
Frequently Asked Questions

Can You Sell a Great West Life Indexed Universal Life Policy? (2026)

Who holds the block, and what a closed block means

Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company was domiciled in Colorado and headquartered in Greenwood Village, supervised by the Colorado Division of Insurance. On January 24, 2019, Protective Life Corporation announced an agreement to acquire via reinsurance substantially all of Great-West’s individual life insurance and annuity business — including bank-owned and corporate-owned life insurance, single premium life, individual annuities, and a portion of the closed block life and annuity business. The transaction closed effective June 1, 2019 and represented approximately $1.2 billion of capital investment, the largest acquisition in Protective’s history at the time. Great-West’s retirement and investment management operations were not part of the deal, and Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company was subsequently renamed Empower Annuity Insurance Company of America.

Here is why that history is not trivia. A universal life contract has guaranteed elements — a minimum crediting rate, a maximum cost of insurance scale — and non-guaranteed elements the carrier sets from year to year: current crediting rates, current caps and participation rates on an indexed policy, and current cost of insurance charges. In an actively sold product line, competitive pressure gives a carrier a reason to hold those non-guaranteed elements attractive. A closed block has no new customers to attract.

That does not mean anything improper. It means the realistic planning assumption for a closed-block policy is that non-guaranteed elements drift toward their guaranteed limits over time, not that today’s declared cap persists for twenty years. Plan against the guarantees, not against the current scale. Separately, do not confuse the Canadian company: The Great-West Life Assurance Company combined with London Life and Canada Life on January 1, 2020 to operate as The Canada Life Assurance Company, and Canadian policies sit outside the U.S. settlement market because most provinces prohibit trafficking in life insurance.

Are you the owner, or only the insured?

Given the composition of this block, ask the question directly rather than assuming.

Bank-owned and corporate-owned life insurance is purchased by an institution on the lives of employees or executives, with the institution as owner and beneficiary. If your employer bought the policy, you cannot sell it. The institution owns the asset and makes the decisions, and its own governance, accounting treatment, and any consent you signed at issue all govern.

Key person coverage works the same way — the business owns it and the business decides. See selling key person coverage and selling a business-owned policy.

Split-dollar arrangements are the messiest version. An employer and an executive share premium cost and benefit rights under a written agreement, and unwinding one at retirement or at a company sale involves the agreement itself, any collateral assignment securing the employer’s interest, and the tax treatment of the rollout. That is work for the company’s counsel and the executive’s own tax advisor before anyone contemplates a transfer.

A policy transferred to you — a former executive who received a policy at retirement, for instance — is yours, but confirm the carrier’s ownership records match. Records and family understanding diverge more often than you would expect. See who is allowed to sell a policy.

Confirm the owner of record in writing before doing anything else. It costs one request and it prevents months of wasted effort.

How indexed crediting works, and where it disappoints

If the contract is genuinely indexed universal life, the crediting method is where expectations and outcomes diverge.

An IUL is a universal life contract whose account value is not invested in the market. The carrier tracks an external index over a segment period, usually a year, and credits interest through three levers: a cap that ceilings the credit for that segment; a participation rate that applies only a share of index movement; and a floor, almost always 0%, that credits nothing in a down year. The floor is real protection, but nothing is not the same as breaking even, because monthly charges keep deducting.

Two mechanics rarely emphasized at the point of sale. Crediting is normally based on the index’s price movement only, excluding dividends, a meaningful drag against total return over decades. And caps and participation rates are typically not guaranteed — they may be reset, constrained only by contractual minimums often far below the declared rate. On a closed block, that flexibility deserves particular weight.

So find the guaranteed minimum cap and guaranteed minimum participation rate written into your contract. Those, not today’s declared numbers, define what the administrator has promised. See what indexed universal life is.

Element	Guaranteed or not	Realistic planning assumption on a closed block
Index cap	Guaranteed minimum only	Assume drift toward the guaranteed minimum over time
Participation rate	Guaranteed minimum only	Same — plan against the contractual floor
Floor	Guaranteed, typically 0%	Charges still deduct in a zero-credit year
Cost of insurance	Maximum scale guaranteed	Model the guaranteed maximum, not the current scale
Death benefit	Guaranteed while the policy is in force	Depends entirely on the policy staying in force
No-lapse guarantee	Guaranteed if the premium test is met	Verify status in writing; it fails on timing too

How indexed crediting works, and where it disappoints

Cost of insurance drag and the illustration rules that came too late

Cost of insurance is deducted monthly against the net amount at risk — death benefit minus account value — priced per thousand dollars at the insured’s attained age. Mortality rates roughly double every seven to eight years in later life, so the charge is negligible at 55, substantial at 75, and capable of consuming an entire year’s premium at 85.

The loop is what does the damage: a shortfall in account value increases the net amount at risk, which increases the charge, which widens the shortfall. That is why an IUL can look healthy for fifteen years and then fail in three. Combine it with capped upside, zeroed down years, and caps drifting toward guaranteed minimums on a closed block, and a policy illustrated at 7% for forty years can be on a materially different path. See how cost of insurance works.

Regulators tightened the illustration side of this, though only prospectively. The NAIC adopted Actuarial Guideline XLIX in 2015, capping the maximum rate at which an indexed UL could be illustrated and requiring comparative disclosures. AG 49-A followed in 2020, curbing illustrations built on multipliers and bonuses, and AG 49-B took effect in 2023, further limiting how proprietary and volatility-controlled index accounts may be shown. Each round made new illustrations more conservative. None of it repaired a policy sold under the older rules — and those are the contracts now in difficulty.

The documents that settle the question

Request the following from the administrator, in writing, and expect it to take a few weeks on a transferred block:

Two in-force illustrations — one at current caps, rates and charges, one at guaranteed minimum crediting with maximum guaranteed charges. The second is the contract the administrator is obligated to deliver, and on many IUL policies it lapses a decade or more before the first one does. See what an in-force illustration is.
The minimum annual premium to carry the policy to maturity, and the date it would lapse with no further premium at all. That second number tells you how much time you have.
Secondary guarantee status — is a no-lapse rider attached, is it in force, what premium by what date maintains it, and if it has failed, is a catch-up still available and by when. These riders fail on late payments as readily as short ones, and once the catch-up window closes the guarantee is permanently gone. See what a no-lapse guarantee is.
Owner and beneficiary of record, plus any collateral assignment.
Modified endowment contract classification. Single premium life — a meaningful part of this block — is frequently a MEC by design, which changes how loans and withdrawals are taxed during life. It does not block a sale, but it changes how surrendering compares to selling. Take the answer to your own CPA. See what a MEC is.

Sell, reduce, surrender, or keep

With those documents in hand, rank the four options against real numbers.

Reduce the death benefit. Consistently the most underused option on a universal life chassis. A smaller face amount means a smaller net amount at risk and a smaller monthly charge, sometimes enough that existing account value carries the reduced policy with no further premium. Confirm the effect on MEC classification before executing.

Sell it. An offer equals the projected death benefit, less the premiums the buyer expects to fund, discounted at their required return. Buyers model the minimum premium that keeps the contract in force, not what you have been paying. Qualification depends on the insured rather than the product: most providers want at least $100,000 of face amount, prefer $250,000 or more, and focus on insureds past 70 or past 65 with impairments that shorten projected life expectancy. Loans must be cleared at closing, and the two-year contestability period — restarting after any reinstatement — blocks a closing until it runs. See selling an indexed universal life policy.

Surrender. Immediate, but on most universal life contracts the surrender value is well below what the market pays for the same policy, and gain above cost basis is ordinary income.

Keep it. If the death benefit is needed and the true minimum premium is affordable, nothing improves on that.

Pine Lake Life Solutions does not purchase policies and is not licensed in every state. We provide education and a free policy review: confirm who owns and administers the contract, read the guaranteed-rate illustration, and tell you which of these four the policy genuinely supports. Send the policy cover page or call (305) 209-7183.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who administers a Great-West individual life policy now?

Protective Life acquired substantially all of Great-West Life & Annuity’s individual life insurance and annuity business through a reinsurance transaction effective June 1, 2019, representing roughly $1.2 billion of capital investment. Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company was afterward renamed Empower Annuity Insurance Company of America. The retirement and investment businesses were not part of the transaction.

Does a closed block change how my policy performs?

It changes the realistic assumption about non-guaranteed elements. Current caps, participation rates and cost of insurance charges are set annually by the carrier, and a block with no new sales has less competitive reason to hold them attractive. Plan against the contract’s guaranteed minimums and maximums rather than the currently declared scale.

Can I sell a policy my employer bought on my life?

No. In bank-owned or corporate-owned life insurance the institution is the owner and beneficiary, so the decision belongs to it, not to the insured. Key person coverage works the same way. Split-dollar arrangements require unwinding the written agreement and any collateral assignment first, which is work for company counsel and your own tax advisor.

Why does my IUL credit less than the index gained?

Three reasons combine. A cap limits the credit in strong years, a participation rate applies only a share of the index movement, and crediting is normally based on price movement excluding dividends. Caps and participation rates are typically not guaranteed beyond a contractual minimum, so they can be reset lower over time.

What did the AG 49 series change?

Actuarial Guideline XLIX, adopted by the NAIC in 2015, capped the maximum rate an indexed universal life policy could be illustrated at and required comparative disclosures. AG 49-A in 2020 restricted illustrations built on multipliers and bonuses, and AG 49-B in 2023 tightened treatment of proprietary and volatility-controlled indices. None applies retroactively.

Is single premium life usually a modified endowment contract?

Frequently yes, by design, because a single large premium generally exceeds the seven-pay limit. MEC status changes how loans and withdrawals are taxed during the insured’s life, on a gain-first basis with a possible additional penalty before age 59½. It does not prevent a settlement, but it affects how surrendering compares to selling.

Find out what your policy is worth — free, confidential, no obligation.

A 15-minute educational review covers your eligibility, every alternative, and a realistic view of what each path would net you.

Call (305) 209-7183 · Request a review online →

Table of Contents