Kaplan Continuing Education: Is It the Right Choice for Your Life Insurance Needs?

Navigating the world of life insurance requires a solid understanding of its intricacies. For professionals seeking to enhance their knowledge or individuals aiming to start a career in the insurance sector, continuing education is essential. Kaplan Financial Education offers a range of courses and resources designed to help individuals obtain and maintain their insurance licenses, as well as expand their expertise. This article delves into Kaplan's life insurance continuing education programs, providing a comprehensive review to help you determine if it's the right fit for your learning objectives.

Kaplan Financial Education: An Overview

Kaplan Financial Education is a well-known provider of educational resources for various financial sectors, including insurance. They offer licensing exam prep products for Life, Health, Property, Casualty, Adjuster, and Personal Lines. Kaplan provides a variety of learning methods, including live online classes, OnDemand courses, and self-study programs. This flexibility allows individuals to choose a learning style that fits their budget and schedule.

Licensing and Exam Preparation

Obtaining an insurance license is the first step to becoming an insurance agent. Kaplan's study packages are designed to provide a full learning experience, helping students gain confidence for exam day. As one satisfied customer, Christina B., noted, "This class was the final push that helped give me the knowledge I needed and the confidence to believe in myself that I would pass the state exam the first time, which I did. I highly recommend this course to anyone who is about to take the state exam. The time and money are well worth it."

Kaplan's material is a great resource for the exam. The Qbank questions are particularly helpful for clearing exams.

Continuing Education Course Offerings

Kaplan offers a variety of continuing education courses relevant to life insurance and related fields. These courses are designed to provide insurance agents with the knowledge they need to stay current with industry trends and regulations. Here are some examples of their course offerings:

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Life Insurance: The Basics and Then Some, 2nd Edition: This course explores the types of policies and provisions within the products. It reviews the fundamentals of life insurance, policy terms and designs, loans and withdrawals, and underwriting. With its many components and options, few financial services products offer the range and flexibility of life insurance for both business and personal planning.
Disability Income Insurance: Safeguarding Your Future: This course helps insurance agents recognize the probabilities of disability, the potential losses resulting from disabilities, and the need for disability income protection. It covers individual disability income insurance as well as other sources of disability income protection such as social security, group disability income protection, and salary continuation plans.
Social Security: Now and the Future?: This course provides an in-depth discussion of all Social Security benefits, with specific emphasis on retirement and survivors benefits for eligible workers, their spouses, widows and widowers, and divorced spouses. The course also examines the implications of collecting retirement benefits early as well as delaying retirement benefits.
Medicare and Medicare Supplements: Closing the Coverage Gap: This class reviews Medicare Parts A-D, the coverage gaps, and Medicare supplements. The course discusses Medicare Select Plans, Medicare Advantage Plans, as well as the impact of the Affordable Care Act. Participants will leave with a better understanding of Medicare eligibility, the original Medicare Plan, what services are not covered by Medicare, and how to close the Medicare coverage gaps.
Insurance Planning for Seniors: This course is designed for senior clients with financial peace of mind during their senior years as they plan for their financial future. The course will address their risk management, how to deal with inflation, proper retirement plan distributions, an overview of their social security benefits, also how to analyze their retirement income, investing those retirement assets for the senior market. Lastly, the course will address taxation and market conduct in the senior market, with key resources to assist.
Estate Planning Techniques: Understanding Trusts, Buy-Sell Agreements, and Special Planning Considerations: This class reviews several types of trusts, the tax implications of placing property in a trust, and special planning considerations for married and non-married couples. Students will discover how buy-sell agreements can facilitate the continuation of a business and create estate liquidity, and how to use powers of attorney and advance medical directives to deal with incapacity.
Understanding IRAs - Products, Distributions, and Strategies: This course will review the features and benefits of IRA plans and the relative advantages and disadvantages of different types of IRAs and different IRA strategies. The course will place particular emphasis on distribution options and requirements, understanding transfers and rollovers under the new rules, and IRA conversions.
The Ins and Outs of Group Insurance: This course helps insurance agents understand how group insurance works, how group insurance and employee benefits serve both the employer and employees, and how group insurance interfaces with other sources of insurance protection. The course provides an overview of group life, health, disability, and long term care insurance, as well as a review of Section 125 plans.

Modalities of Learning

Kaplan uses different modalities of learning:

Webinars: Kaplan offers many courses as webinars.
OnDemand Courses: Kaplan has on-demand courses, that can be accessed anytime.
Self-study programs: Kaplan offers also self-study programs.

User Experience and Course Structure

Kaplan's continuing education courses are designed to be user-friendly and easy to navigate. The courses are often structured with a logical progression of topics and clear explanations. Regular assessments and simulated examinations are integrated to reinforce key concepts and gauge readiness for examinations. The learning process is thoughtfully mapped out and presented in a professional and easy way to understand the curriculum.

Benefits of Kaplan Continuing Education

Comprehensive Content: Kaplan's courses provide a comprehensive look at the life insurance industry, covering general information about insurance, insurance regulation, insurance law, underwriting basics, and group insurance.
Flexible Learning Options: Kaplan offers various learning methods, including live online classes, OnDemand courses, and self-study programs, to fit different learning styles and schedules.
Engaging Instructors: Some instructors are thorough and keep students engaged throughout the week.
Helpful Study Tools: Kaplan’s material is a great resource for the exam, especially the Qbank questions for clearing exams. Also, the calendaring tool keeps students on track with studying just in time to take the exam.
Continuing Education (CE) Credits: Many Kaplan courses offer CE credit hours awarded by the Department of Insurance in the state you've selected.

Potential Drawbacks

Dry Material: Some users have found the material to be dry and boring.
Incomplete Coverage: Some courses may not cover specific state requirements as well as others. For example, one user noted that the WV coverage for property & casualty was not covered adequately.
Content Organization: Some users have found the reading content convoluted and hard to follow, with random references to material in different chapters.

Kaplan Financial Education Reviews

Kaplan Financial Education has a generally positive reputation, with an average rating of 4.3 stars based on 3,868 reviews. Reviewers frequently highlight the positive user experience, finding the learning tools and platform very helpful for their studies. Many consumers also appreciate the staff, noting their helpfulness and the engaging way some instructors deliver content.

Addressing Specific Needs: Life Insurance Agents and Senior Planning

Kaplan's courses cater to various needs within the life insurance sector. For instance, the course on "Insurance Planning for Seniors" is specifically designed to equip agents with the knowledge to serve senior clients effectively. It addresses risk management, inflation, retirement plan distributions, and Social Security benefits, providing a comprehensive overview of financial planning for this demographic.

The Importance of Beneficiary Designations

One critical aspect of life insurance often overlooked is beneficiary designations. Kaplan offers a webinar on "Beneficiary Designations - Getting it Right," emphasizing the importance of accurately designating beneficiaries to avoid unintended consequences. This course covers individual beneficiaries, minor beneficiaries, trust beneficiaries, per stirpes beneficiaries, and beneficiaries for business plans.

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Integrating Social Security into Retirement Plans

With retirees increasingly relying on Social Security benefits, financial professionals need a strong understanding of these benefits to integrate them into clients' retirement plans. Kaplan's course on "Social Security: Now and the Future?" provides an in-depth discussion of Social Security benefits, including retirement and survivors benefits, and examines the implications of collecting benefits early or delaying them.

Understanding Commercial Liability

For insurance producers dealing with businesses, understanding commercial liability is essential. Kaplan's class on "Understanding Commercial Liability: Essential Coverage Every Producer Must Know" discusses commercial liability coverages and crime insurance. It explains how commercial general liability insurance protects a company's assets and provides financial resources in the event of liability claims.

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