In the 1980s when current assumption universal life (CAUL) hit the market, sales illustrations were created showing cash value returns of 10% and more every year – for a product that was invested in fixed instruments. When equity markets soared and variable universal life (VUL) became the rage, many sales illustrations projected 12% returns – again, every year. Life insurance illustrations are at best a [...]
Executive Summary: The 3rd wave of the pandemic was the most widespread and deadly. Through 2020, we did not find evidence of protection on Life Settlement lives from COVID. However, in January 2021, at the peak of the 3rd wave, we saw the first signs that vaccines may be reducing excess mortality in Life Settlements. Many Life Settlement lives are in the highest [...]
In this post we estimate an “equal-risk” projection of COVID-19 mortality within life settlements using the geographic overlap of COVID-19 deaths with life settlement insureds. By comparing this equal-risk rate to observed data, we estimate a net mortality risk factor of 6-12x for the life settlements population. This is on par with a simple age-weighted projection of mortality and suggests socio-economic advantages may have [...]
On October 30th 2018, Voya Financial, a company we wrote about because of a lawsuit filed against it for cost of insurance increases that occurred on universal life policies sold in the past under the Security Life of Denver banner, announced in its third-quarter earnings call it would be ceasing all life insurance sales as of the end of the year. The company, which was [...]
In the past few years, we have posted many entries dealing with the cost of insurance (COI) increases we have seen in Current Assumption Universal life (CAUL) policies. Almost three years ago, we were among the first to begin ringing the bell on this issue (see: If The Cost Of Insurance Goes This High, You Are Guaranteed To Have Some Angry Clients.) We have been asked [...]
In my last entry, Underwriting Life Insurance….What Every Trustee Should Know, I wrote about the steps that should be taken to ensure the best pricing when purchasing a life insurance policy. The difference in underwriting offers can play a large role in the success of the ILIT you are managing. After all, keeping a policy in force over the lifetime of the Insured is much harder [...]
Recently, the Guinness Book of World Records announced the purchase of the world’s most valuable life insurance policy, a $201 million dollar policy. The previous record according to Guinness (although I have heard tale of cases that surpass both of these) was a $100 million dollar policy on David Geffen, a founder of DreamWorks Studios, who got his start working with up and coming California rock [...]
