.jpeg)
WE MAKE LIFE SETTLEMENTS A CREDIBLE OPTION FOR TOP WEALTH ADVISORS AND LIFE INSURANCE PROFESSIONALS.
We offer the first and only life settlement solution that meets the highest standard of client care for conscientious wealth advisors and life insurance professionals. We deliver the price discovery benefits of competition among multiple credible buyers, but without the opacity, inefficiency, and indefensible economics of brokers - and we protect your clients from lowball offers from individual buyers, like those you see on TV.
Transparency. Effective price discovery. Expediency. Rational fees.
Fiduciary Minded
End-to-end transparency, auditable, active advisor engagement, and fee for service rather than sales commission
Maximum Value
Smarter price discovery process that yields true maximum value winning bids, not just a bid to beat the second highest
Expeditious
Staged in days (vs. weeks), with actionable bids <2 weeks (vs. 6 - 8 weeks), and funding in ~60 days (vs. 120+)
Defensible Fees
7.5% of the value vs. >30% with brokers and undisclosed fees or markups with single-source auctions
Boldly Different
Since 2016, we have worked with RIAs around the country - including 6 of the top 10 and several others among the top 50 and 100 - collectively managing hundreds of billions of AUM for tens of thousands of HNW clients, to help them confidently and professionally offer life settlements to their older clients with unwanted and surplus life insurance. Some view them opportunistically and reach out to us when a client brings up life settlements, while with others, we have enterprise relationships in which we enable a more strategic dialogue (helping add functionality to their workflow management/CRM solutions) between advisors and clients about their life insurance, to include life settlements. In the latter, the frequency of life settlements is 5x - 10x of that in purely reactive environments.
We are also proud to include among our most significant relationships a rapidly growing universe of principled life insurance professionals, with tens of billions of dollars of in-force life insurance for tens of thousands of clients, who had previous experience with brokers, but who came to value the psychic and financial benefits for their clients of our approach.
If you have experience with life settlements - good, bad, or indifferent - you'll see that we undertake the transaction in a very different manner than you are likely accustomed to. If you are among those who have thought that maybe the process was convoluted and opaque and that the economics for brokers are indefensible, or at least suspect, we should talk.
If you are not familiar with life settlements and how your older clients might benefit from you, their trusted advisor being able to undertake a professional, ethical, and effective sale of a life insurance policy that they have determined (ideally, with your counsel) that they no longer need or want to maintain and might want to explore selling for a significant premium to its surrender value, please read on, and again, we should talk.
Your clients stand to benefit greatly.
Why the Difference Matters
We understand that as a wealth advisor or insurance professional looking out for the best interests of your client and assessing the potential utility of a life settlement, while maximum bids and net proceeds are obviously of the greatest significance, a broader description of the value proposition of the transaction is important to consider. We deliver that.
A wholly different approach that generates materially better results - psychic and intrinsic - for your client than inaction and the incumbent solution.
While a brokered settlement necessarily degrades the role of client-facing advisors into third-party referral sources, in a transaction without an audit trail and into which the advisor has little or no visibility, in 1908's model, you are a fully informed client advocate and a partner in an efficient, effective, fully transparent, and auditable transaction that has effectively identified the asset's maximum value and that the fees are transparent, defensible, and rational.
Sophisticated professionals for the most sophisticated advisors
Experienced Team
We founded this business in 2016, after seven years on the buy side of the market, and nobody in the market has deeper or broader experience or better understands how to conduct effective, expeditious price discovery for in-force life insurance with institutional buyers.
All humility aside, we are the best at what we do and we work only with the best, most client-focused wealth advisors (including three of the top five and six of the top ten largest RIAs in the country), fiduciary-minded life insurance professionals, and fiduciaries who operate with the same principles and values that we do - transparency, professionalism, fairness, and client advocacy.
YEAR FOUNDED
2016
After 7 years with a large private equity buyer of in-force life insurance, purchasing policies from the incumbent channel of brokers.
GREATER PROCEEDS
>30%
On the difference in fees alone, we enable you to deliver 30% greater proceeds to your clients. As we typically generate higher winning bids, likely even more.
TOP-50 RIAs SERVED
10+
Top RIAs (HNW & UHNW) managing >$700B in AUM. We do not publicly share the firms we work with, but we are happy to provide references, upon request.
INSURANCE FIRMS SERVED
10+
Several of the largest, most sophisticated and client-focused insurance agencies/brokers in the country, who previously engaged life settlement brokers.
DAYS TO COMPLETE PRICE DISCOVERY/CLOSE
20/75
We expeditiously engage the market and compel efficient and effective bidding, getting you and your client to actionable bids in weeks, not months...and then quickly to close/fund.
OUR FEE
7.5%
Our transparent, clearly described fee is less than 1/4 what brokers charge, leaving your client with far greater proceeds, even if you want to collect a fee for service for your role in the transaction.
1908 BY THE NUMBERS
We know that we are are not for everyone, but we are for those wealth advisors and insurance professionals who prioritize transparency, maximum proceeds, and defensible fees in everything they undertake for their clients.
$2,948,000 winning bid
$157,500 1908 fee/$52,500 fee to RIA
$5,300,000 GUL
$800,000 cash value
85 year-old healthy female
$7B RIA
$1,500,000 winning bid
$75,000 1908 fee/$75,000 fee to agent
$5,000,000 UL
$35,000 cash value
74 year-old healthy male
Insurance Advisor
$5,300,000 winning bid
$265,000 1908 fee/$265,000 fee to agent
$12,000,000 GUL
$0 cash value
85 year-old healthy male
$10B in-force insurance advisor
$350,000 winning bid
$26,250 1908 fee/$17,500 fee to agent
$1,100,000 VUL (bank owned)
$0 cash value
94 year-old healthy male
Large, national IMO
Compelling outcomes
far better than lapse or surrender
While not every HNW/UHNW policy owner with a policy that they and their advisor have determined is no longer of sufficient utility to justify maintaining it will wish to sell it, given the financial benefits that can inure to the seller of a large life insurance policy, our experience is that the vast majority will, in fact, want to avail themselves of the option.
Here are a few examples of why.
Fundamentally different
simply doing the right thing
As private equity buyers of in-force life insurance for seven years before founding 1908 in 2016, it is clear to us that the incentive structure and level of fees - not to mention the absence of objective, professional wealth management advice to navigate the transaction - that characterize the conventional broker market levy a wholly unreasonable tax on policy owners. It encourages bad behavior that has negative psychic and economic implications for your clients.
So, with a fundamentally different philosophy that underlies everything we do, we undertook to deliver a materially differentiated and better service for fiduciary and fiduciary-minded advisors of HNW/UHNW clients to ensure that you can deliver a life settlement solution worthy of your reputation and standards.
60% of HNW/UHNW own at least one life insurance policy, but only a tiny fraction of those policies is ever meaningfully reviewed in the years following its purchase.
Wouldn't it be helpful to know what your clients own and whether and how cost-effectively it is performing its intended role?
Even if your firm is not otherwise focused on advising on life insurance, we'd love to talk to you about out how we can enable your advisors to more strategically engage clients about their life insurance, what objectives it is intended to advance, and its evolving relevance and utility relative to its cost over time.
And we can help ensure that no older client ever unwittingly misses the opportunity to maximize the value of a policy that you and they assess no longer makes sense to maintain.
Vice President (CFP, CLU)
large national BGA
"Your approach aligns with where the true advice business for life insurance is going, including transparency in the otherwise murky industry of life settlements."
Partner (CLU, CFP, ChFC)
$10 billion in-force insurance firm
.jpeg)
"My mind is analytical and I love it when someone dives deep into an industry looking for ways to improve it. You have certainly done that with your approach.
You did a great job explaining to us why your firm is structurally different from the brokers we used in the past and I appreciate that and agree with your approach. We'll help many families together."
Head of Insurance Solutions
$120B RIA
"I won’t even imagine the reaction of one of our advisors to learning too late that a life insurance partner that we work with put a shared client into a brokered life settlement and paid those outrageous fees."
Senior Insurance Advisor (CFP)
$7B RIA
"We have seen direct evidence of the benefits of both higher bids and materially lower fees that accrue to our clients who want to do a life settlement as a result of using 1908’s service."
Partner (CLU, CFP, ChFC)
large national IMO
.jpeg)
"We are excited to see 1908 disrupt the market. It is long overdue and we now understand why things always felt a little off with the brokers. Someone is finally exposing all the BS in the industry and addressing it with real transparency, advisor engagement, and defensible fees.
We're big fans of what 1908 is doing. It is very needed."
More frequent and substantive an opportunity than most wealth advisors are aware...
HNW/UHNW >72 own $1.5T life insurance
60%
Lapsed and Surrendered, ~$75B every year
4%
Average multiple of CSV and % of face value
8x/23%
High life insurance ownership, high lapse rates
How real an opportunity?
HNW/UHNW HH's > 72 own almost $1.5T of permanent or convertible life insurance - including 75% of business owners and 66% of senior executives. However, because the relative utility of the insurance often declines as the insured and owner age, 90% is lapsed or surrendered before it pays a death benefit - 4%/year, about $75 billion by 40,000 HH's.
While there is not an organized market, per se, there are 20+ credible institutional buyers that buy in-force life insurance as a long duration, fixed income alternative for as much as 60% of the face value of a policy, creating a substantial windfall for the seller from an otherwise illiquid and unwanted asset. Since 2010, the universe of buyers has become highly institutional, with many household name private equity, hedge funds, endowments, and private and public pensions having invested billions of equity capital into buying in-force life insurance.
Without your advocacy, policy owners are unlikely to maximise the value of the asset...
Lapse or surrender the policy for little or no benefit to the owner
90%
Engage a broker that conducts ineffective price discovery and charges 30%
5%
Engage a single buyer that pays far less than the policy is actually worth
5%
Low consumer awareness, limited penetration
Your advocacy is needed
Are any of your clients objectively better off without you responsibly engaging them about monetizing an unwanted or surplus life insurance policy from which they might be able to extract hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars?
Of course not.
How are they likely to react to you learning after they lapsed a policy that they could have worked with you to sell it? Or to having engaged a broker that subjected them to a confusing, prolonged process that cost as much as 30% of the proceeds? Or that they sold the policy for likely far less than its true value to a single, non-competitive buyer, like those that advertise on TV or single Providers that are aggressively marketing their service directly to advisors?
Badly flawed distribution
opaque, unnecessarily prolonged, ineffective
Simply, while engaging a broker or a single buyer that you might see advertise on TV will result in a better financial outcome for your client than doing nothing, both options are badly and fundamentally flawed and cost your client significant proceeds and psychic energy.
The “common value” approach that brokers use, while necessary to create the perception of having increased the value of the policy with a prolonged, multi-step auction, is not only inefficient and time-consuming, it rewards bargain-hunting behavior. It does not incent the bidder who values it the most to actually bid to its “private value” unless other bidders compel it to do so...and your client will likely get far less for the policy than they should, even before the egregious >30% fees are taken into account.
And as for single bidders - it is not difficult to understand that they are not in business to make competitive offers when not compelled to do so. Your client cedes significant proceeds for the convenience of engaging a single buyer.
Simplifying things...
we respect your relationship, time, and intelligence
Our simple, expeditious price discovery process is respectful of your and your client's time, effort, and, honestly, intelligence. Our disciplined engagements typically deliver actionable bids in 5 - 10 days (after a two-week underwriting period), consummation and funding within 60 days, and require less than 10 hours of your time, most of which is only after you and your client know whether the winning bid is sufficiently compelling.
Importantly, our process is more than just expeditious and efficient. It is also effective, designed around how institutional capital actually values life insurance policies. We recognize and take advantage of the fact that each bidder's "private value" is different and independent of others' valuations and that each bidder would prefer to bid to their true value rather than risk not getting the asset in an effort to acquire it at a bargain price.
90% do nothing
$45 billion/yr face value forfeited
Client surrenders or lapses the policy, unwittingly foregoing potentially significant proceeds, far in excess to surrender value.
5% engage a broker
$2.5 billion/yr face value settled
Client is subjected to a confusing, opaque, prolonged, and ineffective price discovery process, paying in excess of 30% fees.
5% engage single buyer
$2.5 billion/yr face value settled
Client cedes proceeds to buyers with a business model predicated on acquiring policies at a substantial discount to market value.
Why Your Advocacy Matters
Are any of your clients objectively better off without you responsibly engaging them about monetizing an unwanted or surplus life insurance policy from which they might be able to extract hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars?
Of course not. And because consumer awareness of the option to sell an unwanted or surplus life insurance policy is about 10%, a lack of engagement from you has only three outcomes, none of which are beneficial to your client.
Respect Relationships
You are an engaged, active participant in the process, seen as the driver of value, not a 3rd party to a brokered transaction into which you have limited visibility.
Straight Forward
A less intrusive staging process and a smarter, more efficient and effective price discovery process ensure faster execution and higher winning bids.
Real Counterparties
You directly engage the best, most experienced Providers in the market to reach ~20 high-quality institutional buyers - never fringe capital.
Simple, Fair Fee
We receive a fee of 5% - 7.5% of the value we help you realize, the difference between the winning bid and the cash value of the policy.
Simple, Transparent, Effective
we respect your relationship, time, and intelligence
While a brokered settlement necessarily degrades the role of client-facing advisors into third-party referral sources and recipients of sales commissions, paid by the buyer, in a transaction without an audit trail and into which the advisor has little or no visibility, in 1908's model, you are a fully informed client advocate and a partner in an efficient, effective, fully transparent, and auditable transaction.
Our simple, expeditious price discovery process is respectful of your and your client's time, effort, and, honestly, intelligence. Our disciplined engagements typically deliver actionable bids in 5 - 10 days (after a two-week underwriting period), consummation and funding within 60 days, and require less than 10 hours of your time, most of which is only after you and your client know whether the winning bid is sufficiently compelling.
01
No Contract with Us
Your client has no life settlement application or contract with us and we don't waste your or their time with no-value process steps to create "work product", like securing LE reports that buyers do not use, etc. - and if bids aren't compelling, we don't tie them up with a non-circumvent or limit their ability to pursue other options.
02
Smarter Price Discovery
We don't "negotiate" bids in a protracted, multi-round, open auction. Unlike the flawed broker approach, which incents and enables bargain-hunting behavior, our price discovery process compels max value indications in a 5-day, blind, best-and-final auction, lest the Provider risk not winning the policy in an attempt to acquire it at a bargain price.
03
Contract with Winning Bidder
If you and your client assess that a Provider's (the capital's buying agent, in effect) indication is worth pursuing, your client executes a life settlement application with that Provider to sell the policy and then contracts to pay us (and you, if you and your client choose) after they receive their proceeds from the Provider. We stay as engaged with you as you like as that process advances to the transfer of ownership and funding.
04
7.5% Fee for Service
After your client receives their proceeds, they pay us a fee of 7.5% of the value of the transaction (gross proceeds - the cash surrender value) and, if you'd like to receive compensation for your role in the engagement, you do so as a fully transparent, clearly described fee for service from your client, not a sales commission paid by the buyer. Our typical engagement with RIA advisors pays 0% - 2.5%, while with insurance producers, we split a 10% fee, 5%/5%.
Protecting Sellers' Interests by Engaging the Best Advisors
CFP® CE Credit Course
Our best clients are our most informed and experienced - those who know which questions to ask and how to aggressively advocate for their clients in contemplating, assessing, and executing a life settlement. So, we have partnered with a CFP® and former insurance lead at a $7B RIA, who delivers a CE credit (1 hour) course for CFP's to learn about how life settlements work, how market buyers value policies, and who the relevant market participants are (including competing solutions to what we offer). It arms the CFP® with enough knowledge to ensure that you can deliver the best outcomes - psychic and economic - for your clients with surplus and unwanted life insurance and for whom a settlement might be the best option.
Let's Talk
If you'd like to learn more about what we do and how we can be of service to you and your clients and their families, please reach out. We'd love to talk.
Thank you.
Materially higher winning bids
we know how institutional buyers actually value policies
While the analysis underlying the value of an in-force life insurance policy is complex and requires extensive domain expertise, the final calculation of the value is a simple DCF. Various risks are priced in an otherwise relatively simple IRR calculation, applying a discount rate to a projected stream of cash flows (premiums, death benefit) over a unique mortality curve for a given insured.
Different buyers often ascribe different values to each of these variables, which results in variable valuations of a given policy and the only way to compel buyers to bid as aggressively as their unique, "private value" dictates is our blind, best-and-final approach. that ensures much faster outcomes and, more importantly, produces often substantially higher winning bids by recognizing that 1) each bidder's private value is unique and independent of others' valuations and 2) bidders, in an asset-constrained market, will bid to their true value rather than risk not getting the asset in a strategy to get it at a bargain price (less than their "private value") if there is a cost to unsuccessful bargain hunting.
