Rider

A rider is an amendment attached to a policy that adds a benefit or capability the base contract doesn't include. Policies from the same company become completely different tools depending on rider selection, design happens here, not on the brochure.

For cash-value strategies, three riders do the heavy lifting. The Paid-Up Additions (PUA) rider is the engine of early Cash Value, the defining feature of an Infinite Banking design. A term rider adds inexpensive temporary Death Benefit on top of the base policy, which raises the IRS funding ceiling and lets you push more PUA dollars in without creating a Modified Endowment Contract (MEC); well-designed policies often use it purely as MEC headroom. And waiver of premium (see Waiver of Premium) keeps the whole system funding itself if you become disabled, insurance on the insurance.

Living-benefit riders turn the death benefit into money you can use while alive: Accelerated Death Benefit riders for terminal, chronic, or critical illness, and long-term-care riders that make a policy a credible alternative to standalone Long-Term Care Insurance. Some are included free and pay pennies on the dollar when exercised; some are priced and pay well, the contract language, not the rider name, tells you which.

Family and flexibility riders round out the menu: guaranteed insurability (buy more coverage at set future dates regardless of health, powerful on policies for children), children's term riders, and accidental death. Each adds cost; each should earn its place.

Rider rules of thumb: understand what triggers the benefit and what it actually pays, ask what each rider costs against the base premium, and revisit at conversion time, Convertible Term exchanges sometimes carry riders forward, sometimes don't.