Life Settlement - Investors News

A new association has formed to transfer longevity and mortality-related risk to the capital markets in the same way that some of the world’s biggest perils, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, are protected against by shifting the risk to investors via catastrophe bonds.

Life settlement packagers target B-Ds. But private placements of policy-backed securities raise concerns among independent broker-dealers. For the first time they can recall, several independent broker-dealers have been solicited by life settlement companies to sell private placements of securities based on life insurance policies.

Crump Life Insurance Services has purchased the assets of a life settlements company.

The Institutional Life Markets Association, also known as ILMA, announced today their First Annual European Investor Summit. The conference titled, “Longevity as an Alternative Investment”, will take place on Tuesday,May 19th, 2009 at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel, in London, England. The event will be one day prior to the Deal Flow Media Conference on Life Settlements, also hosted in London.

“The US secondary market for traded life insurance policies has reached a respectable size and matured significantly over the last decade. Given this trend a broad range of products have been developed and launched offering investors access to life settlements as an alternative asset class, however, investors have thus far lacked a reliable benchmark which reflects the performance of the various funds dedicated to this market. This issue has been solved with the launch of the AAP Life Settlement Index, “says Beat Hess, Managing Partner of AA-Partners Ltd.

Yesterday the board of directors for Life Partners Holdings, Inc. (LPHI) authorized the buyback of as much as one million shares of its own stock.

The Federal Reserve has cleared Protective Life Corp., the Birmingham, Ala., insurer, to become a bank holding company, making the carrier eligible to a slice of the $700 billion federal bailout.

Advanced Underwriting Solutions leads the life expectancy (LE) market in a trend toward transparent reviews. In an environment of recent economic uncertainty, AUS continues to lead with the philosophy that it is vital to focus on consistency in the methodology and tracking of Senior Market impairments that have mortality implications affecting life expectancies. The LE’s provided by AUS provide in-depth detail on medical impairments combined with ICD codes - this allows investors a clear understanding of how to appropriately bucket risks within their portfolios.

Hirshorn To Spearhead Capital Markets Activities

Legacy Benefits, LLC announces the addition of Mark Hirshorn to head its Capital Markets efforts. Prior to joining Legacy, Mark spent two years as Director, US Securitization at Fortis Securities LLC in New York. He focused on client-based transactions and projects involving structured solutions in the global markets. Prior to joining Fortis, Mr. Hirshorn spent ten years at Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank where he managed the bank’s US securitization efforts.

Hirshorn will lead the company’s capital markets initiatives, developing and marketing life settlement based products and structures while establishing relationships with an expanded group of institutional clients. Hirshorn said, “This is a unique opportunity to help an established and respected organization build out its funding platform and origination capacity.

Leveraging my experience, and the skills developed over the past twenty years, I look forward to helping Legacy reach its full potential in the global markets.”

Andrew D. Terrell to Lead New Life Settlements Companies

Institutional Life Services, LLC, (ILS) and Institutional Life Administration, LLC, (ILA), companies newly created by Goldman Sachs, National Financial Partners and Genworth Financial today announced Andrew D. Terrell as their first chief executive officer. ILS andILA are a marketplace and clearing operation, respectively, formed to create acompetitive and compliant institutional marketplace for the settlement of life insurance policies.