Summary: The growth in the number of qualified pension and profit sharing plans in use in the United States has been tremendous in recent years. Pension and profit sharing plans offer the opportunity to defer income tax, encourage savings for retirement, and for employers to attract and retain quality employees. Often, this means opportunities for the sale of life insurance to fund benefits in pension and profit sharing plans. With some knowledge of pension and profit sharing plans, there is no reason that people in the insurance industry should not be able to get their fair share of these sales.

The principal aim of this discussion is to provide some working knowledge of pension and profit sharing plans. This, in turn, may enable the readers to explain the nature of the various plans and, perhaps, to generate some interest among prospective clients. Much more detail on this subject can be found in the Advanced Sales Reference Service (ASRS), another publication of The National Underwriter Company.