Charles L. Ratner, JD, CLU, ChFC

Trust & Estates Magazine


Cleveland, OH

Charles L. Ratner is the National Director of Personal Insurance Counseling for Ernst & Young and a Managing Director of The Ernst & Young Center for Family Wealth Planning. Since joining the firm in 1989, his practice has been devoted to providing life insurance consulting services to corporations, financial institutions and individuals and estate and business succession planning services to closely-held companies. Prior to joining Ernst & Young, Mr. Ratner served as director of the advanced estate and business planning group of a major life insurance company.

Mr. Ratner is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts and Emory University School of Law. He is an Attorney, a Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) and a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU). He is a member of the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting (AALU), the Society of Financial Service Professionals and the American Bar Association, and is currently the Vice-Chair of the Committee for Insurance of the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section of the American Bar Association.

Mr. Ratner is a frequent author and speaker on financial matters. His articles have appeared in Probate & Property, Trusts & Estates, Best's Review and National Underwriter. He is often quoted in such publications as Business Week, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. He is a contributing editor to Ernst & Young's Financial Planning Reporter and a contributing editor to the American Bar Association's Insurance Counselor Series. He is a co-author of Ernst & Young's Personal Financial Planning Guide. Mr. Ratner has spoken on life insurance and business succession topics to a wide range of audiences, including the Notre Dame Tax and Estate Planning Institute, the Philip E. Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, the Society of Financial Service Professionals, the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the American Law Institute-American Bar Association (ALI-ABA), Association for Advanced Life Underwriting (AALU), Million Dollar Roundtable, Top of the Table, and numerous estate planning councils and professional societies across the nation. He is also a national instructor for Ernst & Young in the areas of life insurance and estate and business succession planning.