Your Voya indexed universal life policy is almost certainly no longer administered by Voya, and understanding what a closed block is will explain most of what you have experienced with it. Voya Financial sold its individual life insurance business to Resolution Life Group Holdings in a transaction that closed in January 2021. That sale included Security Life of Denver Insurance Company, the Colorado-domiciled insurer through which much of Voya’s individual life coverage — including its indexed universal life products — was written. Voya kept its employee benefits business, so a Voya-branded group certificate through an employer is a separate matter with separate rules.
Being in a closed block is not a crisis and it is not a scandal. It is a normal outcome in this industry and the contract you were issued is unchanged. But it does have practical consequences that a policyholder should understand: the company administering your contract is not competing for new sales with the crediting parameters on your policy, requests for documents can take longer, and legacy universal life blocks across the industry have been where cost-of-insurance rate increases have landed. Those consequences shape how you should manage the policy regardless of whether a sale is ever on the table.
The rest of this page covers where each piece of Voya’s business went so you can find yours, what index crediting actually delivers versus what was illustrated, why the guaranteed-basis in-force illustration is the only document that matters, and what an institutional buyer would model if the policy is large enough to attract one.
In This Article
- Where each part of Voya’s business went
- What it actually means to own a policy in a closed block
- Voya’s indexed universal life products and what varies among them
- Cap, participation rate, floor, and why the old illustration is history
- The one document that answers the question
- What a buyer models, what disqualifies a file, and what to send
- Frequently Asked Questions
Where each part of Voya’s business went
Voya Financial, headquartered in New York, is the successor to ING Groep’s United States operations. Those operations were separated from the Dutch parent and taken public in 2013 as ING U.S., and the company adopted the Voya name in 2014. Over the following decade Voya divested most of its individual insurance business in two distinct transactions that are constantly confused with each other.
- The closed block variable annuity segment went to Venerable in 2018. Venerable Holdings was formed for that purpose, and its principal insurance subsidiary, Venerable Insurance and Annuity Company, is Iowa-domiciled and was previously named Voya Insurance and Annuity Company. Annuities.
- The individual life business went to Resolution Life Group Holdings in a sale that closed in January 2021, including Security Life of Denver Insurance Company, domiciled in Colorado and therefore overseen by the Colorado Division of Insurance. Life insurance, including indexed universal life.
- Employee benefits stayed with Voya, written largely through ReliaStar Life Insurance Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is regulated by the Minnesota Department of Commerce. ReliaStar was formerly Northwestern National Life and came into the ING organization around 2000.
Resolution Life is itself a specialist in acquiring and administering in-force life blocks rather than writing new business, and its own ownership has continued to evolve — Nippon Life Insurance Company agreed in late 2024 to acquire Resolution Life. Rather than rely on any article for the current corporate parent, ask your servicer to state in writing which entity administers your contract today.
None of these transfers altered a contract term. Your guaranteed values, rider provisions, charge structures, crediting formulas, and conversion rights are exactly what the policy said on the day it was delivered. What changed is the letterhead. Our page on what happens when a carrier merged and who owns the policy covers the general rule.
What it actually means to own a policy in a closed block
A closed block is a portfolio of in-force contracts that is no longer being added to. The acquiring company’s job is administration, hedging, and paying claims, not selling. Four things follow, and they are worth knowing whether or not you ever consider a sale.
Crediting parameters are not a marketing tool anymore. On an open block, a carrier has some commercial incentive to keep declared caps and participation rates attractive, because prospects compare them. On a closed block that incentive is absent, and the contractual guarantee — typically a minimum cap far below the illustrated one — is the real floor on what you can rely upon. Read the guaranteed minimum in your contract, not the current declared rate.
Service is transactional. Document requests, in-force illustrations, and beneficiary changes get processed, but there is rarely an agent of record with a relationship to escalate through. Put requests in writing, keep copies, and give the servicer a specific list rather than an open-ended question.
Legacy universal life blocks are where cost-of-insurance increases have appeared. Several insurers across the industry have raised cost-of-insurance rates on older universal life blocks, and those actions have drawn litigation elsewhere in the market. Whether one has been applied to your specific policy is a question for your servicer. If you have ever received a notice of a rate change, keep it — the original notice is the document that matters and it is not always easy to obtain later.
The contract is fully enforceable. A closed block is still backed by a licensed, regulated insurer subject to solvency oversight in its domiciliary state and to your own state’s guaranty association framework. Being in runoff is not the same as being at risk.
Voya’s indexed universal life products and what varies among them
Voya’s individual indexed universal life lineup was marketed under names including Voya Indexed Universal Life — Global Choice and Voya IUL-Accumulator, with variants oriented toward either cash accumulation or death benefit protection. Product names and availability changed over the years and none of them are being sold new today. Your rights are governed by the form number printed on your policy, not by the marketing name it carried at sale — two policies issued three years apart under the same brand can differ materially if the form changed.
The accumulation-versus-protection distinction matters to this analysis. An accumulation-oriented design is built to grow cash value, typically carrying higher early charges and a heavier emphasis on crediting; owners funded them aggressively and often expected to draw income from them later. A protection-oriented design is built to sustain a death benefit at the lowest reliable premium, sometimes with a secondary guarantee attached, and carries lower expected cash values.
To an institutional buyer, the protection-oriented contract is usually the more attractive asset, because the buyer wants a death benefit sustained cheaply and has no use for cash accumulation. To a policyholder deciding whether to sell, the accumulation-oriented contract more often produces a surrender value that competes with any offer — and when the guaranteed cash surrender value exceeds what a buyer would pay, surrendering wins and no amount of shopping changes that.
Ask your servicer for the plan name, the form number, whether any secondary guarantee is attached and whether it is currently satisfied, the guaranteed minimum cap and participation rate, and the current cash surrender value. Those five answers determine which of the two categories you are in. Our general explainer on indexed universal life covers what a true IUL contract contains.
| Voya business line | Where it went | Who to contact today |
|---|---|---|
| Individual life, including indexed universal life | Sold to Resolution Life, closed January 2021 | The Resolution Life servicing organization |
| Security Life of Denver Insurance Company | Part of the 2021 individual life sale | Same; Colorado-domiciled issuer |
| Closed block variable annuities | Sold to Venerable in 2018 | Venerable Insurance and Annuity Company, Iowa |
| Group and employee benefits life | Retained by Voya | Voya, largely through ReliaStar Life of Minnesota |
| Retirement and investment accounts | Retained by Voya | Voya; unrelated to any life policy |
| Policy you cannot identify at all | Traceable | Premium draft records, then your state insurance department |
Cap, participation rate, floor, and why the old illustration is history
An indexed universal life policy is not invested in the index. The carrier holds general account assets, funds an option budget each segment, and credits a formula-derived amount governed by three parameters.
The cap is the ceiling: 9 percent cap against a 24 percent index year credits 9 percent. The participation rate is the fraction of index movement counted, so 60 percent participation against a 10 percent index year yields 6 percent gross before the cap applies — quoting either parameter alone tells you nothing. The floor, usually zero, means a negative index year credits nothing rather than a loss.
The floor is the feature the product is sold on and the one most often misread. Zero applies to the index credit, not to the account value, because the monthly deduction for cost of insurance, administrative charges, and rider costs comes out regardless. On an older contract those charges are heavy, so a zero-credit year is a losing year for the account value rather than a flat one. Note also that the measured index is usually a price return index excluding dividends, and that crediting applies per segment with different parameters and anniversary dates, so the blended outcome rarely matches any headline number.
As for the illustration you were shown at sale: treat it as a historical document. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners adopted Actuarial Guideline XLIX in 2015 to cap the crediting rate an indexed universal life illustration may display, tying it to the policy’s own hedge budget. Designs adapted, so the NAIC issued AG 49-A for policies illustrated from around the end of 2020, restricting how favorably multipliers and bonus accounts could be shown, and then AG 49-B, effective May 1, 2023, tightening buy-up account treatment further. A pre-2015 projection would in many cases be impermissible today for the same product. Comparing your statement against it tells you the rules changed and nothing about what to do now.
The one document that answers the question
Request a current in-force illustration run on guaranteed assumptions: minimum crediting rate, maximum cost of insurance, maximum expense charges. Specify guaranteed basis explicitly in writing, because servicers default to the current-assumption version and the two documents lead to opposite conclusions.
The guaranteed-basis illustration answers the only question that matters to both you and any buyer: what premium is required to keep this contract in force to age 100 in the worst case the contract permits? Everything else — the crediting history, the agent’s original pitch, the current declared cap — is commentary until you have that number.
Ask for three scenarios in the same request, which most servicers will produce together: the premium to carry the policy to age 100 on guarantees, the premium to carry it to age 100 on current assumptions, and the projected year of lapse if you continue paying exactly what you pay today. The gap between the first and third figures is usually the entire story.
While you are at it, get the outstanding loan balance and its accrual rate in writing. Loan interest erodes the account value that is keeping the contract alive, and the outstanding balance reduces the net death benefit dollar for dollar, so a heavily loaned contract is worth materially less to a buyer than its face amount suggests. Bring that number to the first conversation rather than after an offer has been quoted. Our page on what an in-force illustration is gives the exact request language, and what cost of insurance is explains the charge that drives the projection.
What a buyer models, what disqualifies a file, and what to send
A life settlement is the sale of an in-force policy to a licensed institutional buyer for more than the cash surrender value and less than the death benefit. The buyer becomes owner and beneficiary, assumes the premiums, and collects the face amount at the insured’s death. Valuation is mechanical: project the payout date from life expectancy underwriting, discount the death benefit back, subtract the premium stream required to get there, apply a required return. Our page on how buyers price a policy sets out the model.
Predictable disqualifiers follow from a mechanical model:
- Face amount below roughly $100,000, because underwriting, legal review, escrow, and decades of servicing cost about the same regardless of size.
- A long projected life expectancy. An insured in their early sixties in good health produces decades of projected premium and a present value that cannot clear the surrender value. Expect no offer rather than a low one.
- A guaranteed cash surrender value that already exceeds any plausible offer, common on well-funded accumulation designs, in which case surrendering wins.
- A required premium out of proportion to the face amount.
- A contract still inside the two-year contestability window, which no buyer will purchase.
For a free policy review, send the policy cover page and the most recent annual statement. Those establish the issuing company, current servicer, plan name and form number, face amount, and funding picture — enough to answer the question in most cases. Withhold Social Security numbers, banking details, and medical records at this stage; nobody needs them to say whether a policy is worth pursuing, and an early request for them is a reason to slow down and ask why. There is no legitimate upfront fee for a policy evaluation.
Pine Lake Life Solutions provides education and a free policy review, and does not provide legal, tax, or investment advice; anything touching taxes, an estate plan, or eligibility for a needs-based benefit should be reviewed with your own CPA or attorney first. If what you hold is a term or whole life contract rather than an indexed one, start with our pages on a Voya term life policy or a Voya whole life policy. To reach a reviewer, call (305) 209-7183 with the cover page in front of you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who services my Voya life insurance policy now?
Most likely an entity within the Resolution Life organization. Voya sold its individual life business, including Colorado-domiciled Security Life of Denver Insurance Company, to Resolution Life Group Holdings in a transaction that closed in January 2021. Ask your servicer to confirm in writing which entity administers your contract today, since Resolution Life’s own corporate ownership has continued to change.
Is my policy less safe because it is in a closed block?
Being in runoff is not the same as being at risk. A closed block is still administered by a licensed insurer subject to solvency examination in its domiciliary state and covered by your own state’s guaranty association framework. What does change is commercial incentive: on a closed block, declared caps and participation rates are no longer competing for new sales, so the contractual guaranteed minimums matter more.
Can the company raise my cost of insurance charges?
Universal life contracts typically permit charges up to a stated contractual maximum, and several insurers across the industry have raised cost-of-insurance rates on older universal life blocks, drawing litigation elsewhere in the market. Whether one has been applied to your specific policy is a question for your servicer. If you ever received a notice of a rate change, keep the original document.
What exactly should I ask my servicer for?
Ask in writing for a current in-force illustration on guaranteed assumptions showing the premium required to age 100, the same projection on current assumptions, and the projected lapse year if you keep paying your present premium. Add the plan name and form number, the guaranteed minimum cap and participation rate, any secondary guarantee status, the cash surrender value, and any loan balance with its rate.
Should I surrender the policy instead of selling it?
Sometimes, and it is worth checking before shopping anything. Accumulation-oriented indexed universal life designs that were funded aggressively can build a guaranteed cash surrender value that exceeds what a buyer would pay, particularly when the insured is in reasonable health and the projected life expectancy is long. When that is true, surrendering nets more and no competitive process changes the result.
Which state’s rules apply if the issuer is domiciled in Colorado?
Your own state’s rules govern the sale. Life settlement transactions are regulated where the policy owner resides, and that state sets the required disclosures, the licensing standard applied to providers and brokers, and the rescission period after signing. The Colorado Division of Insurance oversees Security Life of Denver as a company but plays no role in regulating your transaction.
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Related Reading
- What Is Indexed Universal Life
- Carrier Merged Who Owns Policy
- What Is An In Force Illustration
- What Is Cost Of Insurance
- Can I Sell An Indexed Universal Life Policy
- How Life Settlement Buyers Price A Policy
- Sell My Voya Term Life Policy
- Sell My Voya Whole Life Policy
Pine Lake Life Solutions does not purchase life insurance policies and does not provide legal, tax, or investment advice. Information provided is for educational purposes only. Eligibility for any option, including life settlements, is not guaranteed and depends on individual circumstances, policy terms, underwriting, and market conditions. Consult independent legal, tax, or financial professionals before making decisions regarding a life insurance policy.