In 2013, we wrote about the sale of Lincoln Benefit Life, an Allstate company, to Resolution Life Holdings, Inc. It was the first purchase in the States for the UK company, run by British entrepreneur, Clive Chowdry, whose ambition, according to the Financial Times, was to “buy up and roll together a number of life assurance businesses and to run them for cash instead of hunting for new customers.” The runoff administration business model employed by the company and by some others who have entered the insurance field is designed to maximize profits on a closed book of business. At the time, we worried about cost of insurance increases in the block, but now comes a lawsuit accusing Resolution from failing to pay “death benefits owed” to Emergent Capital, Inc., a Boca Raton, Florida, life settlement company that owned the policies in question.  Although the lawsuit references only three policies directly, it notes that Emergent is owner of over 50 Lincoln Benefit Life policies.

Allstate is alleged in the lawsuit to have pursued the sale to Resolution without proper vetting and without the “good faith” that it owed Lincoln Benefit policyholders. The suit claims Allstate had a “fiduciary” duty to act in the“best interests” of policyholders, “use diligence and care in the investigation and evaluation of Resolution as a prospective purchaser,” and “refrain from acting solely on the basis of its own financial interests in the sale.” The complaint asserts that by “choosing to sell its wholly-owned subsidiary Lincoln Benefit to the highest bidder, Allstate improperly placed its own financial interests ahead of those of the insurance policy owners” and “ignored information readily available to it regarding Resolution’s well known claim practices that violate statutory and common law rules.” The suit claims that it was “understood in the life insurance industry that, at the time of the Lincoln Benefit sale to Resolution, Resolution may have had an internal practice and procedure of challenging and contesting every life insurance policy claim involving policies having life benefits that exceeded a certain high-level dollar amount.”

The three policies referenced in the lawsuit were issued in 2007 to trusts created by the insured, and shortly after policy issue, all three trusts “entered into a premium financing arrangement with Emergent,” apparently with the policies as collateral. Within approximately three years of policy issue, all three policies had their ownership changed to Emergent. Lincoln Benefit was alerted via “fully completed and fully executed” Lincoln Benefit service forms that policy ownership was changed with “the specific knowledge and consent of Allstate’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Lincoln Benefit.” After the change in ownership, both Lincoln Benefit and then Resolution accepted premium payments from Emergent.

According to the suit, Allstate “created and maintained an internal committee to research, vet, and approve qualified and reputable insurance premium financing companies, like Emergent, with whom it would do business and recommend to prospective life insurance applicants to help them afford to pay the exorbitant insurance policy premiums charged by Allstate and its wholly-owned subsidiary Lincoln Benefit.” Emergent “was one of a small group of life insurance premium financing companies affirmatively approved” by the carrier and its subsidiary company.

When the insured on each policy passed away, Lincoln Benefit took the position that death benefits need not be paid on the three policies because they and “others similarly situated had never been active or in force” since “any life insurance policy issued by Allstate’s wholly-owned subsidiary Lincoln Benefit (whose assets were sold by Allstate to Resolution) and financed through a life insurance premium finance arrangement, like the one the Frankel ILIT, the Matz ILIT and the Pohl Trust, and others, had with Emergent, constituted a “stranger owned life insurance policy” (or “STOLI”) and, therefore, were all void ab initio.”

Emergent is asking that compensatory and punitive damages be awarded in the case and estimates compensatory damages alone to “exceed $32 million..with the potential of exceeding $100 million.”

While we have Lincoln Benefit policies under management we have never had any issues with death benefit payments or even service levels at the carrier since the sales transaction took place.

We will report back with updates as the suit winds its way through the court.