Life insurance appears on both the balance sheet and the report slides, but the value shown depends on where it's displayed. There are two rules at play:
Cash value is used on the balance sheet and asset-focused slides.
Permanent and Other policies follow this cash-value rule. If a policy has no cash value, it falls back to $0.
Term policies have no cash value, so they appear as a line item with a $0 or null value.
Death benefit is used on EstateFlow slides to reflect the payout amount rather than the policy's current cash value, because EstateFlow projects what happens at death.
This image below exhibits the different fields in the asset card to store both Cash Value and Death Benefit:
Which value is used where
Area | Value used |
Balance Sheet | Cash value |
Asset Ownership slides | Cash value |
Estate Overview slide | Cash value |
EstateFlow slides | Death benefit |