Life Insurance

In a move aimed at reducing its debt, Houston-based Tenneco said Monday that it will sell its life insurance businesses to ICH, an insurance holding company headquartered in Louisville, Ky., for $1.5 billion. The two firms jointly announced the signing of the agreement in principle. The deal would give ICH ownership of Tenneco companies that accounted for 6% of the energy-oriented company's 1985 profit of $431 million. It had revenue of $15.3 billion last year.

Australians seeking life insurance may have to undergo an AIDS test if they admit to being homosexual, using drugs or having had a blood transfusion in the early 1980s. Health Minister Neal Blewett told Parliament last week that the Australian life insurance industry had agreed to a voluntary code of practice on acquired immune deficiency syndrome, believed to be the first in the world.

Need cash to carry your business through the coming months? Take a look at those old cash-value life insurance policies listed as assets on your balance sheet. Policies insuring your key managers or guaranteeing pensions, for example, might prove more valuable than you think. The real value of such a policy might exceed its cash value. And if you surrender it in exchange for that cash value, you might leave money on the table.

Metropolitan Water District General Manager Carl Boronkay has withdrawn a proposal that the district buy $150,000 in life insurance policies for himself and another top official. The MWD board of directors had rejected the fringe benefit proposal last week as they also turned down proposed 6% pay raises for other managers. Boronkay, along with chief counsel Fred Vendig, were to receive the tax-sheltered insurance policies in lieu of pay raises. Boronkay earns $189,000 and Vendig $149,100.

Few consumers were concerned about the health of their life insurance companies a few years ago. That's because life insurers were generally considered big, strong and dull. Far too dull to fail. However, all that changed last year when six of the nation's biggest life companies fell like a handful of dominoes. Within a matter of months, more than a million consumers who had insurance policies and annuities with Executive Life Insurance Co.

Hundreds of AIDS victims purchased life insurance apparently knowing or suspecting they had been infected with the lethal virus, an insurance industry survey has found. But the survey also suggested that most insurers now have taken measures to exclude potential AIDS patients, using such controversial methods as relying on blood tests to identify exposure to the AIDS virus. Critics also allege that some insurers are turning down applicants who live in predominantly gay neighborhoods.

Ohio Suzuki dealers, in an attempt to restore confidence in the Samurai, are offering a $1-million life insurance policy free to people who buy or lease the vehicle deemed dangerous by Consumer Reports. "You can't run enough ads to erase the cloud that all of this has put over the car," Robert Reichert, president of the Kenwood Dealer Group, said. Reichert said he worked with other Ohio Suzuki dealers on the plan. "We decided that we needed something emphatic," he said.

State insurance regulators have devised a national system for measuring the financial strength of life insurers, but experts warn that the information could be misunderstood by consumers. After more than two years of debate, the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners has proposed a plan that evaluates insurers based on the riskiness of their investments and products.

New England Life Insurance of Boston has signed a five-year lease to occupy 10,208 square feet of space at Century Square, 155 N. Lake Ave., Pasadena, for an aggregate rental of $1,163,712. Merrill Lynch Commercial Real Estate and Cushman Realty were cooperating brokers in the transaction. Century Square is a new 11-story, 200,000-square-foot building owned by H.T. Greene & Associates.

Metropolitan Life Insurance's move to become a publicly traded company will not mean an immediate change for its customers, but the plan appears to be a better deal for them than what policyholders in other insurer conversions are getting. Met Life--the nation's second-largest life insurer--is following other mutual life companies as they all struggle to expand as life insurance sales fall. However, consumer advocates say the news does not mean better policies.