Life Insurance

W. Riley "Skip" Whorton, a semiretired financial planner and life insurance agent, died Aug. 27 of leukemia at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Timonium resident was 68. Mr. Whorton was born on Long Island, N.Y., and then moved with his family to Whortonsville, N.C., where his father worked in the family seafood business. In 1950, he moved to Ellicott City when his father and uncle moved the business to the old Wholesale Fish Market on Market Place in downtown Baltimore.

Old Mutual announced Friday that it is selling its Baltimore-based life insurance operation to a private equity firm for $350 million, far less than what it paid nine years ago. The company bought the division — part of the former U.S. Fidelity & Guaranty Corp. — from the St. Paul Cos. in 2001 for $635 million. Old Mutual is trying to improve its balance sheet and reduce its "risk profile," and is selling to an affiliate of New York-based Harbinger Capital Partners LLC. The life insurance operation employs 163 in Baltimore.

The defense attorney for a Baltimore pastor accused of hiring a hit man to kill a blind and mentally disabled man for life insurance money said at least two other disabled people whose policies listed the suspect as a beneficiary had died, though their deaths were the result of natural causes and the policies had been canceled before their deaths. The attorney made his remarks shortly after Kevin Jerome Pushia, 32, was ordered held without bond in a court appearance Tuesday. Pushia, of the 4500 block of Parkside Place, has been charged with nine counts, including first-degree murder, in the death of Lemuel Wallace, who lived in a Pikesville group home affiliated with the Arc of Baltimore.

A Baltimore pastor who worked with developmentally disabled people was charged Friday with befriending a blind and disabled man in his care, then paying a hit man $50,000 in church funds for an execution so he could collect life insurance money. Police say Kevin Jerome Pushia, 32, who worked for four months as an operations manager for the Arc of Baltimore before abruptly quitting in January, confessed to plotting to kill Lemuel Wallace. Pushia told police he persuaded Wallace and "numerous" other mentally challenged individuals to list him as a beneficiary on insurance policies.

John Wesley Sappington, a life insurance firm official and Windsor Hills community activist, died of complications from non-Hodgkins lymphoma Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 55. Born in Baltimore and raised in Brooklyn Park, he was a 1971 graduate of Brooklyn Park High School. After working briefly at the old Montgomery Ward Co., he joined Baltimore Life Insurance Co. and remained with the firm for 37 years. He worked in computer programming, and at his death he was a supervisor in the company's finance department.

Donald J. Shepard remembers taking over the reins of Dutch insurer Aegon NV during turbulent times for the insurance industry, which was suffering from high credit losses in the post 9/11 economy. Six years later, as he prepares to retire, the economy is in a mess again. This time, it's for different reasons - subprime mortgage problems. But despite beginning and ending his tenure as CEO in rocky economic times, Shepard said he feels he's left Aegon in better shape than he found it. "It's been a good time and we've continued to strengthen this company," he said in a phone interview from the Netherlands yesterday, as Aegon released earnings for the final time during his tenure.

If you are a small business owner, chances are you dream about the future. You may think of yourself networking with industry leaders, cornering the market with an innovative service or directing hundreds of employees. Entrepreneurs often fail to consider a less cheerful scenario: What happens to their business if they die suddenly? Would their business close? Would it be clear who controls the assets? Would your family assets be protected? The best way to avoid this uncertainty is to have business life insurance.

Think about college tuition, health care and especially your electric bill, and it's easy to assume that prices only move in two directions: up and waaay up. But if you haven't been paying close attention, you might not have noticed that one important financial product is significantly cheaper these days: term life insurance. Industry experts estimate that term premiums have fallen 40 percent or more in the past decade alone. "This is great news," says Gary Schatsky, a financial planner in New York.