LIfe Settlement Buyers - Are The Economics In Their Favor Or Yours?
Posted by Norman Hood on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 @ 11:16 AM
By Norman A. Hood
Life settlement buyers are typically institutional investors who acquire diversified pools of life insurance policies to help reduce the overall risk of their entire portfolio. Like all investors, life settlement buyers are interested in their potential risks and rewards. In today's life settlement market both elements have put downward pressure on prices paid to sellers.
On the risk side, insured's life expectancies determine how long life settlement buyers can expect to wait before they collect death benefits. Because life expectancy estimates have fluctuated recently, life settlement buyers have become cautious. This has caused them to seek higher returns to compensate for what they consider to be an increased risk.
On the return side, the collapse of the capital markets in 2007 has resulted in less capital available for life settlement buyers to use. At the same time, the supply of policies has increased as cash strapped seniors have flooded the market to help make ends meet. As a result, today's life settlement buyers are now able to "cherry pick" from an abundance of policies.
In short, we are currently in a buyer's market brought about by too many policies and too little capital. If you must sell, our LIVEpdq 
tool can help you determine the fair value of your policy in today's market. Or, if you can afford to wait, it can help you determine a baseline value for measuring future market improvements.
Note: Blog posts reflect the opinion of the author, which may differ from the opinion of policysettlement.com.