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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
Director 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
Director 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. She is an elected officer, holding the office of Secretary, of the Florida Association of Attorney-Certified Public Accountants.
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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Tom Schiedel
Director of Markets and Banking
A former Regional Managing Director for Citibank Private Bank, where he led the business efforts for three southeast regional offices (Atlanta, Miami and Palm Beach), Tom’s 28 year career with many large lending institutions has awarded him with broad-based financial services experience. The decade before joining Citi, he was Senior Vice President/Managing Director of Wachovia Bank’s Wealth Management Group in Boca Raton. Tom has also held senior management positions for consumer and commercial loan production in Wachovia’s Wealth Management Group, commercial underwriting for their Capital Region (Baltimore/Washington, D.C.), and account officer roles covering commercial and health care-related clients.
A native of Washington, D.C., Tom earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Maryland. Since then, he has cultivated a rich and diverse background in the consumer lending business and high net worth client advisory space. He is a seasoned financial services executive. Tom has a depth of hands-on client management experience that provides him with a unique understanding of the needs facing the high net worth senior market.
Tom was nominated by the Florence Fuller Child Development Centers and became a finalist in the annual “Men with Caring Hearts” Volunteer Awards competition in Boca Raton in 2008. Honorees are chosen by nearly a dozen nonprofit organizations for their exceptional dedication of time, talent and resources to better support the community. Tom is also currently serving his second year as chairman of the Board of the Boca Raton branch of the YMCA.
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LIC Team Bios
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