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Executive Bios
Meet the Life Insurance Concepts Leadership Team
Our principals serve our customers by drawing on their combined 100+ years' of experience, including over 50 years of experience in Premium Financing. Whether our client is an individual, family or business, Life Insurance Concepts makes that client’s best interests a priority. Every strategy that the company recommends, each product it represents, and its knowledge of “everything life insurance” are all designed to help clients achieve their goals.
Simon Bernstein
Chairman of Life Insurance Concepts
With a distinguished insurance career that spans over four decades, Si has created numerous insurance concepts and built up a wealth of insurance-related knowledge that is unparalleled. Most notably, he is the creator of the Arbitrage Life Payment System, known as ALPS throughout the industry. Financing life insurance has been the main focus of his career over the past twenty-five years. Si has been responsible for helping the industry shape its position on acceptable Premium Financing that is rooted in need-driven origination. Inspirational and energetic, Si has developed complex insurance programs designed to enable consumers to take advantage of tax laws making life insurance more affordable. His innovations in this area include 501 (c) (9) Trusts (VEBA's) and Section 79. Writing more than $100 million of premium each year, he is consistently at the top of his profession. Si is a founding member of the esteemed International Forum and his innovative programs have been responsible for providing several billion dollars of death benefits to consumers across the country.
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Ted Bernstein
President of Life Insurance Concepts
Ted has been a consistent innovator in the insurance industry for more than two decades. His contributions to the industry have been in various capacities, including the development of new products for carriers, consulting services for national trust companies such as The Northern Trust Company and as a leader in the distribution of life insurance payment financing. As the founder of "low-load" or "fee-based" life insurance, he helped further the pro-consumer "unbundling" of life insurance introduced by Jim Anderson of Tillinghast in the early 1980s.
Inspired by innovation and consumerism, Ted has marketed new products such as First to Die Life Insurance through joint marketing alliances with national accounting firms. An early distributor of complex tax advantaged benefit programs, including VEBA's created by his father Simon, Ted is an experienced agent and consultant, He has represented esteemed companies such as New England Life, CIGNA and Aetna. With a strong sense of the issues and problems facing his wealthy clientele, he is uniquely qualified to assist those clients with their significant and complex insurance needs.
With numerous articles published in trade publications including National Underwriter, Best's Review and Broker's World, Ted continues to be an industry leader. He has appeared on local and national television programs and has addressed professional groups including attorneys, trust companies, CPAs and the esteemed Society of Actuaries. Featured in business publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes and Inc. Magazine, Ted has helped his customers purchase more than $500,000,000 of death benefit over the course of his career, saving them millions of dollars in premiums. A member of local and national industry organizations such as the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting, Ted has always exhibited a strong sense of commitment to the life insurance industry.
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William E. Stansbury, CLU®, ChFC®
Vice President, Sales
The holder of advanced certificates in Estate and Retirement planning from the American College along with his Charter Life Underwriter (CLU) and Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) designations, Bill has guided all aspects of insurance organizational planning and execution since 1974. Over the course of his career, he designed and implemented specific strategies and delivered education and coaching programs to support the delivery of those strategies. He is currently the President of the Society of Financial Service Professionals Palm Beach Chapter, a qualifying member of the Million Dollar Roundtable (Top of the Table), the International Forum and the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting (AALU). Bill's experience has given him a strong and proactive sense of how to match clients' often-complex needs with just the right products and solutions.
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Ransom B. Jones, CPA
President of Cambridge Companies
A former partner at KPMG Peat Marwick, where he specialized in insurance company taxation and mergers, Ransom's entire career has been
dedicated to the insurance industry. For several years, he was CFO and treasurer of a publicly-traded insurance holding company and
eventually became president of its property and casualty division. Ransom later joined the insurance effort at Goldman Sachs, later moving
on to become Director of Corporate Finance for Citicorp's Insurance Group. He then led ABN AMRO's North American Financial Institutions Group.
Just prior to joining Life Insurance Concepts and its affiliated companies in November 2005, he served in several leadership capacities at AIG.
Over the course of his distinguished career, Ransom has been a speaker and published author on a variety of insurance industry topics.
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Traci Kratish, Esq., LL.M., CPA
General Counsel
A second-generation native Floridian, Traci is a four-time graduate of the University of Florida (B.S.Ac., M.Acc., JD, LL.M.) and is a member of the Florida Bar and a Certified Public Accountant.
While at the University of Florida, Traci was Editor of the Journal of Law and Public Policy, a legal journal whose articles have been cited by the Florida Supreme Court. In addition, Traci was selected for membership in the prestigious Mortar Board, a national honor society which recognizes fifty college seniors at the University of Florida each year for distinguished ability and achievement in scholarship, leadership and service. Traci's scholastic achievements were further recognized with membership in Beta Alpha Psi, an accounting honor society, and Phi Alpha Delta, a legal honor society.
Traci is a member of the Tax and Real Property Probate and Trust Law Sections of the Florida Bar, Tax Section of the American Bar Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants, American Association of Attorney-Certified Public Accountants, Boca Raton Tax Institute, Greater Boca Raton Estate Planning Council and Society of Financial Service Professionals. Traci is the appointed Chair of the Subcommittee on Mentor Programs, Tax Section of the Florida Bar.
Traci also maintains close ties with the local community as a volunteer for Saving Young Hearts, Inc. and as a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, Society of American Magicians and Jewish Federation; and as a previous volunteer with Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program sponsored by the Internal Revenue Service, Special Olympics, Holocaust Survivor Assistance Program, and as a magician-entertainer for children's hospitals.
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Dr. Seth J. Baum, M.D., FACC, FAHA
Medical Director
Dr. Seth J. Baum has bridged the gap between allopathic and complementary forms of cardiology. His Boca Raton practice, Integrative Heart Care is devoted to the prevention of cardiovascular disease.
A graduate of Columbia College and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Baum went on to complete training in Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Interventional Cardiology and Electrophysiology. He opened the Electrophysiology Laboratory at Boca Raton Community Hospital and served as the Medical Director of the Cardiac Catheterization and Electrophysiology laboratories at both Boca Raton Hospital and North Ridge Heart Institute. His work in Integrative Cardiology includes Directing the Harvard affiliated Mind/Body Medical Institute, Boca Raton division, as well as the John Henry Center for Integrative Medicine. He has also served as Adjunct Professor at Florida Atlantic University teaching a graduate level course in Integrative Medicine. In 2002, he founded VitalRemedyMD, a conservative and scientifically-based nutritional supplement company that serves to educate doctors and their patients about the pros and cons of supplementation. Dr. Baum also started the Foundation for Preventive and Integrative Medicine (FPIM, www.fpim.org) in an effort to fund and foster research projects in this blossoming area of medicine.
Further endeavoring to provide a complete cardiovascular preventive approach for his patients, in 2005 Dr. Baum became one of approximately forty cardiologists in the United States to achieve Board certification in Clinical Lipidology. A Founding Physician/Scientist Member of the Society for Cardiovascular CT (SCCT), he also has become one of a select group of cardiologists and radiologists to be recognized as meeting the requirements for the highest level (level 3) in Coronary CT Angiography (CCTA). In addition to Co-Directing a monthly 20 hour CME course in CCTA, Dr. Baum lectures nationally in the fields of Lipidology, CCTA, and Integrative Cardiology. He is in all probability the only cardiologist in the nation with training and expertise in the diverse fields of Electrophysiology, Interventional Cardiology, Coronary CT Angiography, and Clinical Lipidology. Dr. Baum developed (and holds the pending patent on) VitalOils1000™, the only omega-3 fish oil to contain 1,000 mg of combined DHA+EPA in a single soft gel. He has also written two books, The Total Guide to a Healthy Heart, and Age Strong, Live Long; Lessons from my Patients. Dr. Baum has been a repeat guest on numerous Radio and Television shows including National Public Radio, The Voice of America, CBN, Fox network, and MSNBC.
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James E. Joyce, CFP®
Executive Director of Sales, Distribution & Strategic Alliances
James has been one of the brightest young leaders in the life insurance industry for the past decade with a focus on building innovative & exclusive relationships in the premium finance marketplace for various life insurance carriers & life distribution channels. His background includes raising capital, developing structured finance products, launching strategic partnerships and leading carrier execution strategies with global investment banks such as Goldman Sachs & Credit Suisse. Prior to joining LIC, he was the Head of Premium Finance for National Financial Partners where he brought solutions for paying life premiums to their acquired and member firms. Prior to NFP, James operated JJ Ventures, a personal financial planning practice focused on wealth transfer, business, & retirement planning for affluent clients. He has also taught Life Insurance & Risk Management and Estate Planning courses at the University of Texas at Austin. James received his B.B.A. from Baylor University, is a CFP® Certificant and holds his Series 7, 66, and Life & Health Insurance licenses.
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LIC Team Bios
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