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Article Quotes
“…In
May, as the sub-prime mortgage market was cracking, many of the
biggest players in finance gathered at a conference in
“One of American International Group Inc’s recently disclosed
numbers-crunching problems relates to on of its most obscure
businesses: “Life settlements.” … “Policies with a total face value
of around 10 billion were bought and sold last year, according to
the Viatical and Life Settlement Association of America.” … “And a
few years ago, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the investment vehicle of
billionaire investor Warren Buffet, began buying life settlements,
according to securities filings,…”
The Wall Street journal, May 18, 2005
“…The secondary market in life-insurance policies is good for
consumers…”
“Hitherto, elderly Americans with policies they do not need or
cannot afford to keep up have had little option but to let the
policies lapse or sell them back to their insurers.
Plenty seem glad to have an alternative buyer.
No wonder, when on average they can get three times as much
from life settlement firms as they can from their original
insurers.”
“The Economist”, May 17, 2003.
Paradigm shifts don’t occur overnight.
Yet, somewhere along the line, there comes a convergence of
factors that makes significant change inevitable.
With regard to the secondary market for life insurance, this
“tipping point” may already be in the rear-view mirror.
In the past few years, the secondary market for life insurance has
exploded onto the financial planning scene.
Clearly, the market’s basic premise – the consumer’s right to
sell unwanted or unneeded life insurance – has been validated by the
“California Broker”, Feb., 2004.
The rise of the secondary market for the sale of life insurance
policies is raising a number of similar questions that need to be
addressed by life insurance carriers, their broker-dealers, and
their licensed producers.
Will the failure of some prominent insurance carriers to inform
policyholders about the life settlement market spawn a new area of
consumer-based litigation?...”
““California Broker”, March 2003.
We expect the life settlement business, an emerging secondary market
for life insurance, will grow more than ten-fold to $160 billion
over the next several years…”
“”Bernstein Research Call”