If you been "studying Indexed Universal Life (IUL) products intensively", then you seem to have completely missed all the articles and papers that discuss the negatives of them.

Oh, there's *LOADS* of those... and to an article, every one of them falls into one of two camps;
A) COMPLETE ignorant flailing loonballs (often with lots of credentials they hope will hide their bluster) who don't bother to learn what they are talking about and apply the details to the topic, and
B) (Much fewer) Critical assessments of IULs blind to product design... assuming the least effective structuring for any random person.

There are zero negative writings that I have found (and I've seen most, if not all) that stand up to a specifically detailed inspection.

IULs aren't a one-size-fits-all panacea... but for the vast majority of situations, when properly fit to the specifics of the investor considered, they really do outperform the alternatives.

Dave