The short answer is no.

The longer answer requires understanding why, because the question is being asked more than ever, and the misinformation circulating on social media around this topic is causing real financial harm to real people.

Right now, social media is full of content promoting Indexed Universal Life insurance as “infinite banking 2.0,” an upgraded, modern version of the concept that Nelson Nash created. It is not. And the man who created IBC said so directly, in writing, on page 39 of Becoming Your Own Banker.

“I never sold one when I was in the business, and I surely wouldn’t buy one. I would not recommend it nor use it for the infinite banking concept.” – Nelson Nash

Nelson Nash spent 35 years in the life insurance industry. He won lifetime achievement awards. He was a member of the Million Dollar Roundtable. He sat on every major committee in the industry. And in all of that time, he never sold a single Indexed Universal Life, variable life or traditional universal life policy.

That statement should do a lot of your thinking for you.

There are three reasons this question keeps coming up.

First, social media marketing. IUL products are heavily marketed online. They illustrate well, meaning the projected numbers look impressive on paper. And they are being marketed aggressively by people who are either uninformed about IBC or who are deliberately misusing the trademark.

Second, the trademark is being violated. The Infinite Banking Concept is a registered trademark of the Nelson Nash Institute. Authorized practitioners — like the advisors at Ascendant Financial have signed an agreement to use the concept and its trademarks correctly. Many people promoting IUL as an IBC vehicle are not authorized and are not following the trademark policy.

Third, people genuinely do not know the difference. And that is not their fault. The distinction between a product and a process is not obvious. If the first content you encounter about IBC is promoting an IUL, it is entirely reasonable to assume that it is the right vehicle.

It is not.

To understand why IUL does not work for IBC, you need to understand what universal life actually is and where it came from.

Nelson Nash was direct about this on page 39:

“It was invented in the early 1980s by E.F. Hutton, a stock brokerage firm, in my opinion, that knew nothing about life insurance.”

That matters. How we think about something is shaped by what created it. The insurance industry did not invent universal life to serve policyholders. It was invented by a stock brokerage firm to compete with whole life insurance during a period of high interest rates by unbundling the savings and insurance components of a whole life policy and putting them in a single package under a different structure.

The original format was simple: one-year term insurance with a side fund of an interest-bearing account. In the 1980s, when interest rates were running at 10 to 12 percent, that side fund looked attract...

It is one of the most common questions people ask when they first explore the Infinite Banking Concept, and one of the least talked about in mainstream financial planning.

What happens to your dividend-paying whole life insurance policy if you actually live to age 100? Or past it?

The short answer is this: the contract becomes more valuable the longer you live. It was literally engineered with extraordinary longevity in mind.

But the full answer requires understanding a few key concepts: what happens at maturity, what the risks are if you have been borrowing against your policy, and why longevity planning changes everything about how you structure your financial life.

Most financial plans are built around a retirement window, a period between roughly age 65 and an assumed endpoint. Save enough to cover that window, and you are done.

The problem is that the window keeps getting longer.

Medical advances, improved nutrition, and AI-assisted healthcare are all pushing life expectancy further than actuarial tables predicted even a decade ago. A 65-year-old couple today has a very high probability of at least one spouse living well into their 90s. Living to age 100 is no longer a statistical anomaly.

“Living to age 100, that’s not a freak statistical accident anymore. And if medicine keeps advancing the way that it is, I think that age 100, even age 121, could eventually feel like today’s age 85.” – Jayson, Wealth on Main Street

And yet most financial planning conversations are still built around the assumption that you will not live that long.

IBC addresses this directly, not by accident, but by design.

Here is the core mechanic that most people do not understand about dividend-paying whole life insurance.

On the day you take out a policy, the insurance company makes a contractual commitment to pay a death benefit, let’s say one million dollars. You might put in fifty thousand dollars in the first year. The insurer is immediately on the hook for the full million.

Every single day the policy is in force, the cash value inside the contract grows, accumulating toward the point where it eventually equals the death benefit. This is not a feature. It is a contractual obligation built into the design of every whole life policy.

By the time the policy reaches its maturity point age 100 in Canada, age 121 in the United States), the total cash value and the total death benefit are identical. They converge. And at that point, the insurance company’s risk has been fully resolved.

“The contract was designed recognizing longevity. The total cash value and the total death benefit at age 100 must be identical. That is a contractual guarantee.” — Richard Canfield, Wealth on Main Street

This is not a bug. It is the whole point. The policy was always going to get there; the longer you live, the further along that journey you travel, and the more the asset has grown.

In Canada, whole life policies are calculated to an actuarial maturity point of age 100.

In...

• The Problem Nobody Talks About in Entrepreneurship
• What Is the Infinite Banking Concept? (And Why Entrepreneurs Are Asking About It)
• "I Didn't Know What to Call It, But I Knew Something Else Existed"
• The Real Reasons People Hesitate and What's Actually Going On
• What Tara Actually Used IBC For (The Honest Answer)
• The Mindset Shift That Actually Makes IBC Click
• What Les Corbett Observes Across Hundreds of Conversations
• Raising Kids Who Already Think This Way
• The Quote That Stayed with Us
• Listen, Watch, and Connect

You built the business. You’re generating revenue. From the outside, things look successful.

But inside? You’re quietly dealing with limited financing options, unpredictable cash flow, credit lines that cost you, and a banking system that wasn’t designed with entrepreneurs in mind.

That’s not a personal failure. That’s the system working exactly as intended, just not for you.

In this episode of Wealth on Main Street, hosts Jayson Lowe and Richard Canfield sit down with IBC practitioner and Ascendant Financial teammate Leslie Corbett and his client Tara, a mindset coach, entrepreneur, and former realtor, for a candid conversation about what it actually looks and feels like to implement the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) in real life.

The Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) is a financial strategy that uses a specially structured dividend-paying whole life insurance policy as a personal banking system. Rather than routing your money through traditional banks and paying them interest, you build your own pool of capital called cash value that you can borrow against, repay on your own terms, and grow simultaneously.

For entrepreneurs, this matters because:

• Banks are structurally biased toward salaried employees. Entrepreneurs face scrutiny, stricter lending criteria, and limited options.

• Every dollar sent to a credit card, line of credit, or bank loan is a dollar that stops working for you.

Many entrepreneurs are good at making money. The harder part is keeping control of it.

In this episode of Wealth on Main Street, Ravi Kainth shares a powerful insight from more than 25 years of building businesses across different parts of the world, including Hong Kong and Canada: most business owners focus on income, but not enough on where their money goes after it arrives.

Taxes, debt payments, operating costs, expansion, family needs, and lifestyle expenses can create a constant cycle where money comes in and quickly leaves. For many entrepreneurs, the issue is not a lack of effort. It is the absence of a financial system.

Entrepreneurs are usually trained to grow revenue, serve clients, and build the business. But very few are taught how to control cash flow in a way that allows their money to continue working for them.

Ravi explains that one of his biggest realizations came from seeing successful business owners with strong revenue still feeling trapped because so much of their money was flowing back to banks and lenders.

That is where the Infinite Banking Concept becomes part of the conversation.

The Infinite Banking Concept, introduced by R. Nelson Nash in Becoming Your Own Banker, is built around the idea of using a properly designed participating whole life insurance policy as a personal banking system.

Instead of sending every dollar away forever, entrepreneurs can build cash value, access that capital through policy loans, and use it strategically for business needs, debt repayment, opportunities, or family planning.

The goal is not simply to buy life insurance. The goal is to create a system that supports liquidity, control, and long-term wealth building.

Business owners often face unpredictable cash flow. Some months are strong. Others require damage control. Without a system, those swings can create pressure and dependence on banks.

Infinite Banking can help entrepreneurs think differently about capital. It encourages them to ask:

• Where is my money going?
• Who controls my capital?
• Am I building a system or just reacting to expenses?
• How can my money serve my family for generations?

Ravi’s story is a reminder that financial education changes everything. Making money matters, but controlling capital is what creates long-term impact.

If you are an entrepreneur, advisor, or business owner wondering how to create more financial control, this episode is worth watching.

Listen on SPOT...

• Q1: Am I Too Old to Start?
• Q2: Is It Too Late for Me?
• Q3: Does Age Matter?
• Q4: What If I'm Uninsurable?
• Q5: When Should I Start?
• Q6: How Do Policy Loans Work?
• Q7: How Do You Pay Back Policy Loans?
• Q8: What Does It Mean to Be Well Diversified in Lives Insured?
• The Two Rules Worth Memorizing

Short answer: probably not.

As long as you still need to use money, and most of us do until our last breath, the process of becoming your own banker is available to you. The concept itself is not age-dependent.

What is age-dependent is the insurance tool used to implement it. If you want to be the life insured on the policy, there is a cap at around age 85. But here’s what most people don’t realize: the policy owner and the life insured don’t have to be the same person. You can own a policy on a child, grandchild, or any insurable family member and still implement the full process yourself.

Nelson Nash himself became uninsurable after a quadruple bypass in 1987, yet he continued acquiring policies on other family members for decades. Just four or five months before he passed away at age 88, he took out a brand-new, $2,000-a-year policy on a great-grandchild. He knew he wasn’t long for the world, and he still did it.

If Nelson at 88 wasn’t too late, the question is worth asking yourself honestly.

It might be, but probably not for the reason you think.

The only scenario where it’s truly too late is if you have what Nelson called the “arrival syndrome”: the belief that you’ve already learned everything you need to know and there’s nothing left to consider. A frozen mind is the only real barrier.

If you’re coachable, willing to do some research, read a book, and meet with a coach to go over your specific circumstances, it’s not too late.

One important caveat: if you’re starting later in life with no existing savings and limited cash flow, this process is not a magic pill. It won’t solve decades of financial habits overnight. But if you have cash flow, some asset resources, and the mindset to build something that lasts beyond you, there is absolutely a conversation worth having.

Yes, but only in one specific way.

Two people putting the same $20,000 per year into their system will get different results based solely on age. A 60-year-old and a 20-year-old committing the same annual premium will both build cash value, but the 20-year-old will receive significantly more death benefit...

• Q1: What Interest Rate Is Charged on Policy Loans?
• Q2: What Happens If You Don't Repay a Policy Loan?
• Q3: What Is the Difference Between Whole Life and Universal Life?
• Q4: Is the Death Benefit Tax-Free?
• Q5: Are Dividends Taxable? Is a Dividend Considered Income?
• Q6: Why Isn't Everyone Doing This?
• The Core Idea

If you’ve ever gone down the rabbit hole of the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) online, you know the experience well: half the comments say it’s the most brilliant financial strategy they’ve ever encountered, and the other half insist it’s an elaborate scam usually from someone named “Crypto Wolf 1978” with a cartoon profile picture who has suddenly become a leading actuarial expert.

In this episode, Jayson and Richard tackle the questions they hear most often plainly, honestly, and without the noise. Here’s a breakdown of everything covered in Part 2 of their Infinite Banking FAQ series.

This is one of the first questions people ask, and while it’s a valid one, it’s also one of the last things you should be evaluating when choosing a carrier.

Policy loan interest rates vary by carrier and typically range from 5% to 9%, depending on the company and the current rate environment. Some carriers tie their loan rate to the prime rate; others base it on long-term internal assumptions about their participating account performance. At the time of recording (May 2026), rates in the range of 5.5%–7% are common depending on the policy vintage.

But here’s the more important framing: one Nelson Nash made brilliantly in Becoming Your Own Banker: IBC is not a function of interest rates. The real question is not “what rate am I paying?” it’s “where is the money flowing, and who is it working for?”

When you borrow from a conventional bank, your principal and your interest permanently leave your ecosystem. The bank’s shareholders benefit. When you borrow from your life insurance company, one you co-own as a participating policyholder and you repay that loan on your own schedule, both the principal and interest flow back to an entity that works for you. That’s a fundamentally different relationship with money.

Rate shopping before understanding that distinction is like staring at the cost of fertilizer while ignoring the growth of the entire orchard.

What should you be evaluating in a carrier? Dividend history, participating account management, loan process transparency, and ease of doing business. Loan rate is somewhere near the bottom of that list.

• The Allure of the 'Dream Job' And Its Hidden Costs
• The Unseen Side of Success: A Quest for Impact
• The Serendipitous Introduction to Infinite Banking
• The Pivot Point: From Personal Application to Professional Mission
• Rethinking Financial Responsibility: The Power of Ownership
• The New Game: Recapturing Capital vs. Accumulating More
• A New Chapter: Impact Over Commission
• Conclusion: Listen to the Uncomfortable Feeling

What if the financial doctrines you’ve been taught are meticulously designed to keep you tethered, preventing you from ever truly reaching financial independence and personal fulfillment? This provocative question lies at the heart of Josh’s remarkable journey. This story challenges conventional notions of success and reveals how a different approach to money can unlock profound life choices.

Josh, a key member of our team, candidly shares his experience of walking away from a lucrative, secure career, a position many aspire to, in pursuit of something more meaningful. His narrative is a testament to the idea that true success isn’t merely about accumulating wealth, but about cultivating impact and value.

Imagine dedicating 23 years to building a career that culminates in an income exceeding $200,000 annually, with full benefits, unlimited vacation, and equity in the business. On paper, it was the quintessential American dream. Yet, for Josh, an insidious feeling of misalignment gnawed at him.

“It’s kind of like leaving a perfectly good steak dinner because you think there might be sushi somewhere else. It’s a pretty risky move, but… our teammate Josh… he actually did it.”

This wasn’t a forced departure; it was a conscious choice driven by a hunger for meaning. Josh had achieved success and stability but found himself adrift in a sea of unfulfillment. Many people fear making such a leap, not due to inability, but reluctance. The prospect of trading something ‘good’ for the chance of something ‘better’ can be daunting. Yet, for Josh, the missing piece wasn’t financial; it was existential.

From an outsider’s perspective, Josh’s career trajectory was enviable. His initial foray into the insurance business as an agency owner brought him immense satisfaction. He loved the entrepreneurial spirit, the act of building something from the ground up.

“I loved being a business owner, and I loved building something… That changed my titl...