Sometime my clients ask me whether the Total Distribution Cost as shown in the benefit illustrations are my commission. Suddenly today I decided to calculate the exact relationship between my commission earned from life insurance policies and the published Total Distribution Cost as shown in the benefit illustrations. I had always thought that the Total Distribution Cost shown in the benefit illustration should be near to what I earned but to my horror it was far from truth:

Taking real life cases of the life insurance policies that I sold, I tabulated the relationship between my first year's commission and the benefit illustration's first year Total Distribution Cost:

To my horror of horror, my commission is only between 40% to 60% of what was shown in the benefit illustrations. Hey, who on earth ate my commissions?