Michelangelo's David
A symbol of "the dignity of man," representing the Renaissance ideal of human excellence, freedom, and the power to shape one's own life, moving away from more pessimistic medieval views.
An enlightened approach to life settlements for top financial advisors.
We enable conscientious HNW/UHNW wealth advisors at top RIAs, principled life insurance professionals, and Trust companies to extract maximum value from older clients' unwanted and surplus life insurance, delivering transparent and effective price discovery, expedient execution, charging a rational fee.
Giving conscientious wealth advisors a reason to consider life settlements
If you are unfamiliar with life settlements, the sale of an in-force life insurance policy to a 3rd party for an amount greater than the surrender value, or are uncomfortable with the transaction or the incumbent distribution channel, the question as you peruse this website is whether it is worth your time and effort to explore the option for your older clients who own a policy that is no longer of sufficient utility to justify maintaining or from which they might prefer the liquidity that a settlement can generate to the protection or estate planning need that the policy addresses.
Then the second question is how to ensure that your client receives the maximum proceeds for their policy in the most confidence engendering, expeditious, transparent process possible. To call a firm they might see advertise on TV, engage a life settlement broker, or have you, their advisor, call us.
We think if you explore further, you'll conclude that calling us makes by far the most sense and will generate the best possible outcome for your clients.
WHO WE ARE
Experienced capital markets professionals with expertise in the institutional market for in-force life insurance, seven years with a PE buyer and since 2016 enabling advisors at RIAs, principled life insurance advisors, fiduciaries, and trustees to confidently engage buyers.
WHAT WE DO
Conduct a controlled, disciplined, and rigorous price discovery process with 20+ high-quality institutional buyers to ensure maximum value for your older clients' unwanted and surplus life insurance, consummating the transaction in 60 days and being paid a 7.5% fee (min. $12,500).
ALONE IN OUR APPROACH
We deliver substantively better outcomes (1.8x the proceeds and less than half the time) of the incumbent channel of life settlement brokers or single buyers, in the most professional, transparent, and expeditious means to monetize surplus life insurance of HNW/UHNW policy owners.
WHO WE ARE
Experienced capital markets professionals with expertise in the institutional market for in-force life insurance, for seven years with a private equity buyer and since 2016 enabling advisors at top RIAs, principled life insurance advisors, fiduciaries, and trustees to confidently engage the market.
WHAT WE DO
Conduct a controlled, disciplined, and rigorous price discovery process with 20+ high-quality institutional buyers to ensure maximum value for your older clients' unwanted and surplus life insurance, consummating the transaction in 60 days and being paid a 7.5% fee (min. $12,500).
ALONE IN OUR APPROACH
We deliver substantively better outcomes – both psychic and financial, 1.8x the net proceeds of brokers – in a more transparent, expeditious, and confidence-engendering process than any other approach available to policy owners or their trusted advisors.
EXPERIENCE, VALUES, discipline, RELATIONSHIPS
The best at what we do
We started this business because we were frustrated by what we saw as buyers with a large private equity buyer of in-force life insurance for seven years, offended by the incumbent channel's business practices, opaque and ineffective price discovery, and egregious commissions, knowing that top wealth advisors would never not engage the market in a meaningful way without real change, and believed that we could – and should – do it better.
Changing a market with an incumbent channel that wants to protect its egregious economics is hard, but fun, and we work only with people we like and respect personally and professionally, who share our values, and who we’d want to spend time with, if we weren’t working together.
2016
Year Founded
8x/28%
Avg. premium to CSV/% face value
10+
Top 50 RIAs served
7.5%
Fee (Gross Bid - CSV); min $12,500
Rebalancing charitable trust
85 year old healthy male
$350 billion RIA
$12,000,000 GUL
$5,300,000 winning bid
$4,770,000 net proceeds
Change in beneficiaries
91 year old healthy female
Large national wirehouse
$754,000 GUL
$437,400 winning bid
$404,595 net proceeds
Simply no longer wanted policy
73 year old healthy male
$10 billion RIA
$1,500,000 GUL
$130,000 winning bid
$117,500 net proceeds
Illiquid trust
85 year old healthy male
$10 billion RIA
$2,000,000 UL
$200,000 winning bid
$185,000 net proceeds
Unnecessary key man policy
51 year female w/ multiple myeloma
$28 billion RIA
$5,000,000 convertible term
$900,000 winning bid
$832,500 net proceeds
Adjustment of life insurance portfolio
91 year old healthy male and female
$350 billion RIA
$9,800,000 GUL
$4,300,000 winning bid
$3,977,500 net proceeds
Illiquid charitable trust
85 year old healthy female
$10 billion RIA
$5,300,000 GUL
$2,948,000 winning bid
$2,726,000 net proceeds
Illiquid trust
79 year old male/78 year old female
$10 billion RIA
$5,200,000 GUL
$802,500 winning bid
$742,000 net proceeds
Divorce/change in beneficiaries
73 year old healthy male
$70 billion RIA
$3,000,000 GUL
$165,000 winning bid
$152,500 net proceeds
Expired buy/sell agreement
67 year old male w/ cancer diagnosis
General Agent (RIA referral)
$1,500,000 UL (converted term)
$475,000 winning bid
$439,375 net proceeds
Departed CEO policy - company owned
72 year old healthy male
Large public multi-national company
$51,000,000 GUL
$10,000,000 winning bid
$9,500,000 net proceeds
WHICH OF YOUR CLIENTS WOULD NOT WANT TO AT LEAST BE MADE AWARE?
Service wins and AUM growth
A common misconception among many advisors is that the opportunity to monetize a client's unwanted or surplus life insurance policy is limited to when they can no longer afford it - that is only a small portion of the transactions that we actually undertake.
A no longer relevant key man or buy/sell policy. A change in beneficiaries. Diminished willingness or ability to fund a policy or a trust. An illiquid trust as an insured has lived longer than anticipated and funded. An unpalatable increase in premiums with insured outliving the need for a policy. A simple preference for the liquidity that a sale might generate. And as many other reasons as clients who own a policy.
<72/72+
if less healthy/if standard
UL/GUL
policy type (or convertible term)
Any
ownership structure
>$500K
policy size
We work with the best
We count among our clients the most highly-regarded HNW/UHNW RIAs and Trust companies in the country. Three of the top five, six of the top 10, and more than a dozen of the top 50 RIAs, with more than $3 trillion AUM. All firms that assiduously avoided life settlements until they learned of our approach and the benefits for their clients.
We also serve a rapidly growing universe of principled, Best Interest-oriented life insurance professionals at the most sophisticated insurance advisory firms in the country, especially among those with CFP and ChFC designations, as well as Trust Companies, trustees, and wirehouse advisors.
Why do they engage us? We share their values and commitment to delivering as professional and transparent a service to as they do with their clients.
"Once it was clear how big a difference your approach makes for our clients, we could never again in good conscience go back to the broker we used before we were introduced to you and the 1908 team."
Client Service Lead
$10 billion in-force life insurance advisor (part of $350B 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 didn't engage 1908 and put a shared client into a brokered life settlement and charged our client those outrageous fees."
Managing Director, Head of Insurance Solutions
$190 billion RIA
"I know our advisors just added a new tool to their toolbox and I’m excited to see our teams collaborate."
Region Head, CFA
$15 billion RIA
"We have seen time and time again 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."
Senior Insurance Advisor (CFP)
$10 billion RIA
"1908's model has turned this sector upside down amidst all these cowboy brokers."
Managing Director (ChFC, CLU)
$30 billion RIA
"Your approach aligns with where the true advice business for life insurance is going, including bringing real transparency to the otherwise murky industry of life settlements."
Vice President (CFP, CLU)
Large national life insurance broker
"We *love* working with you and your team."
Co-Founding Partner (CLU, ChFC)
$10 billion in-force life insurance advisor (part of $350B RIA)
"You are our only partner in the life settlement space and have built an outstanding reputation with our advisors. We appreciate your partnership and the great work you do for our clients!"
Director of Financial Planning (CFP, CPA, LLM)
$28 billion RIA
MAKING LIFE SETTLEMENTS A PART OF A RATIONAL FINANCIAL PLAN
Results for real families
We are less advocates for life settlements than for conscientious wealth management, life insurance, and Trust professionals to have a responsible means to maximize the value of a life insurance policy that is no longer of sufficient utility to justify maintaining or for which there are preferred means to achieve an estate planning objective, as the insured ages and circumstances change.
Life changes and so do your clients' life insurance needs. We ensure that you can enable them to maximize the value of it when they no longer need it.
1.3x
average multiple of broker winning bid
1.8x
average multiple of broker net proceeds
80%+
of auctions produce a winning bid
15/60
days to actionable bids/funding
SMARTER, MORE EFFECTIVE PRICE DISCOVERY
MATERIALLY HIGHER WINNING BIDS
Our approach, borne of our experience as buyers for seven years and an understanding of how asset-constrained markets price opportunities, is uniquely effective at compelling participants to bid to their true private value, not bidding anchored to others' known bids, yielding substantially higher winning bids than the badly flawed approach of the incubment channel.
The difference is often not just a fraction higher, but a multiple of what a broker could produce, putting hundreds of thousands and even millions more in your clients' account and your AUM.
Rationalizing a Loosely-Organized, but highly-regulated Market
Disciplined market engagement
We access only the highest quality, most reliable capital through the most reputable regulated intermediaries (Providers, licensed to engage sellers on behalf of their capital partners), never fringe capital or Providers with which we don't have extensive transaction experience, to ensure the lowest transaction risk and maximum expediency in the market.
Our approach ensures that your clients benefit from the inefficiencies of a market in which buyers often ascribe divergent values to the same policy, not enabling them to calibrate their bids to others' bids. And we do it in weeks, not months, executed in a secure ShareFile bid room, not via e-mail and phone calls.
Your clients are badly served by brokers
If traditional brokers were just expensive, it would be one thing, but, the truth of the matter is that the descriptions of what they do are utterly fanciful and part of an effort to create the perception of complexity and of having discovered value where it ostensibly wouldn't have been discovered without their “negotiating” expertise, to justify otherwise indefensible 30%+ commissions - and it rarely discovers the policy's true value.
WHICH APPROACH WOULD YOU USE FOR A FAMILY MEMBER'S POLICY?
A fit for principled, pragmatic life insurance agents
Do Right by Your Clients
Higher winning bids, faster execution, 100% transparency into the dialogues with buyers, much lower fee for us, substantially higher net proceeds.
Engender Confidence of Advisors
It's obvious which approach fiduciary advisors with whom you work or seek to partner will prefer and what that will mean for your reputation as a partner.
Comparable Compensation
Given our higher winning bids, agents often receive comparable compensation to what you earn with broker transactions (with agents, we typically split 10% - 12.5%).
"I just cringed every time I had to talk to a client or their advisor about the broker's commissions. I hated it. And I had no hope of describing with any confidence the process and timelines."
UHNW life insurance producer who recently started using 1908 after years of using brokers for his clients' life settlements
without you, clients are on their own
Your advocacy is critical
In a rapidly evolving wealth management landscape that is placing an ever higher premium on financial planning expertise and execution, assuming that you can partner with a firm that shares your values and professionalism, is there any circumstance in which you would not want to enable a client to extract maximum value from a life insurance policy that is no longer of sufficient utility for them to maintain or from which the proceeds of a sale might enable a more appropriate strategy?
We enable you to responsibly and confidently talk with them about what option makes most sense and to effectively and expeditiously engage high-quality institutional buyers of in-force life insurance, if a settlement is what they want to pursue.
Smarter Planner Podcast
Hear in this episode of the "Smarter Planner Podcast" Belle Osvath, CFP, interview 1908's founder, Scott Sanders, about his company's innovative approach to helping financial planners work with their clients to sell life insurance policies that they and their advisors determine they no longer want or need.
Insights and analysis on the market and options for your clients with surplus and unwanted life insurance.
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