Maximizing the value of your older clients' surplus life insurance
We have been a trusted partner of top wealth management firms since 2016, enabling advisors to confidently undertake the process to realize the full value of the life insurance that no longer meets the needs of older HNW/UHNW policy owners.
Maximizing the value of your clients' surplus life insurance
We have been a trusted partner of top wealth management firms since 2016, enabling advisors to confidently undertake the process to realize the full value of the life insurance that no longer meets the needs of older HNW/UHNW policy owners.
Disrupting a Broken Channel
We are capital markets professionals with deep and broad experience in this inefficient, but highly institutional, market. We set out in 2016, after seven years on the buy-side, to change the origination side of the market, deploying the most effective price discovery process and engaging the best wealth management professionals.
To Your Standards
Disciplined execution, end-to-end transparency, complete audit trail, bidding on ShareFile platform with fully-redacted client files, and the fastest process in the market, actionable bids in <15 days and funding in 60 days, and compensation 1/4 the incumbent channel, all give you confidence that the asset's true value has been realized.
Effective
The highest winning bids and lowest fees (7.5% vs. 33% of brokers) result in higher net proceeds to your clients; for life insurance producers, given our higher winning bids, your comp splitting 10% - 15% with us is comparable to what you receive with brokers, while doing the right thing for your client and winning the trust of other advisors.
TRUSTED BY THE BEST WEALTH MANAGEMENT FIRMS AND ADVISORS IN THE COUNTRY
Confidence is our most important deliverable
We enable HNW/UHNW wealth management professionals to confidently monetize older clients' life insurance that is no longer of sufficient utility or of too high a cost to justify maintaining — with the transparency, sophistication, expedient execution, and reasonable fees that fiduciary standards demand.
If you have a client situation or policy that you'd like to discuss, we'd love to help.
UNMATCHED EXPERIENCE
Who We Are
Capital markets professionals with extensive experience in the institutional market for in-force life insurance, first as buyers for seven years and since 2016 enabling top wealth management professionals to engage the market on behalf of their clients.
UNIQUELY EFFECTIVE PRICE DISCOVERY
What We Do
Conduct a controlled, disciplined, and rigorous price discovery process with a universe of highly-vetted institutional buyers to ensure maximum value for your older clients' unwanted and surplus life insurance, generating live bids in 15 days, funding in 60 days.
DIFFERENT VALUES, BETTER RESULTS
How We're Different
Starting with the simple value to always do the right thing for our clients - with complete transparency - to our fundamentally smarter price discovery, we enable you to deliver substantively better outcomes than the incumbent channel and single buyers.
When older clients' life insurance no longer cost effectively serves a relevant planning objective, we ensure that you can maximize its value.
50%
of 70+ HNW/UHNW own a $1.2 T UL
$60B
4% is lapsed or surrendered each year
75%
likley have value to institutional buyers
10x/28%
multiple of CSV/% of face value of average settlement
You already regularly assess and adjust other elements of your clients' financial plan and run price discovery on other assets in a client’s portfolio — real estate, concentrated stock, private equity stakes. Their life insurance warrants the same discipline and attention.
Leading wealth management firms are increasingly recognizing the need to evaluate clients' life insurance as part of financial and estate planning — identifying policies whose original purpose no longer justifies the cost, and facing a choice: lapse, surrender, or sell (settle).
When that moment arrives and it is assessed that exploring a sale makes sense, top wealth advisors trust us to run the industry's most professional engagement, generating the highest bids and greatest net proceeds — often hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars more than a straight surrender (and other means to engage buyers) would return.
Quietly professionalizing and changing how a niche, inefficient market works for the benefit of our clients since 2016
We started this business because we were frustrated by what we saw as buyers at 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 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.
In business since 2016
Deep capital markets and life settlement market experience
Extensive experience with HNW/UHNW wealth advisors
SAMPLE ENGAGEMENT #1
$2,000,000 GUL
$582,000 winning bid | $540,000 net proceeds
Our Client
$500 billion AUM wealth management arm of global asset manager
Insured
93 year old healthy female
Description
Assessing the implications of a pending premium increase, the two adult children of the insured simply no longer wanted to pay premiums after 15 years and $400,000 in premiums having been paid. Instead of a surrendering the policy, which had no cash value, their advisor pursued a sale with us, generating multiple bids from buyers, ranging from $240,000 to $582,000.
Our Client
$30 billion RIA
Insured
51 year old female, cancer diagnosis
Description
Shortly after the sale of her successful business to a private equity firm, the client of our first RIA client firm received a diagnosis of multiple myeloma. She had a key man policy (convertible term with ten years of term left) when her advisor reached out to us to assess her options after receiving an offer of $150,000 from a buyer that advertises on TV.
SAMPLE ENGAGEMENT #2
$5,000,000 Term policy
$900,000 winning bid | $832,500 net proceeds
Our Client
$10 billion RIA
Insured
73 year old healthy male
Description
Several years after his wife had passed, the retired farmer had sold his large farming operation, spending most of his time traveling to visit his children and grandchildren around the country and no longer wanted to fund the second-to-die policy, preferring the $20,000 remaining cash in the policy or something greater, if a settlement were a possibility - which it was.
SAMPLE ENGAGEMENT #3
$1,500,000 UL
$130,000 winning bid | $117,500 net proceeds
Our Client
$350 billion RIA
Insured
91 year old healthy male and female
Description
The retired, former CEO of a large public corporation, and his wife, with a large life insurance portfolio that was part of a complex estate plan, wanted to "trim the sails" a bit on their holdings. They chose to sell about 20% of what they owned, using the proceeds to fund other policies that they would maintain.
SAMPLE ENGAGEMENT #4
$9,800,000 GUL
$4,300,000 winning bid | $3,977,500 net proceeds
12
top 50 RIAs
10+
BGA's/IMO's and top life insurance advisors
Several
Trust companies, private banks, and others
100%
repeat clients
Trusted and engaged by the best advisors in the country
There are few higher professional callings than managing and protecting others' hard-earned money. We know the expectations that clients have of you are and how hard you work to maintain their trust. We know that we play just small role in that broader endeavor, but we take very seriously our responsibility to you and your clients and their families in this otherwise niche, bespoke transaction.
So, we work as hard as you do to ensure successful engagements and substantial service wins. A great source of pride for us is that those wins have driven strategic and ongoing engagement with so many top firms and advisors, including many that avoided the transaction altogether.
"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
$350B RIA
Podcast Appearance: Smarter Planner Podcast
We speak your language
"In this episode, Belle interviews 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."
Host Belle Osvath, CFP, interviews wealth management industry thought leaders and professionals targeting meaningful and useful information to help you stay on top of your game.
INEFFICIENT MARKET CREATES OPPORTUNITIES
Higher winning bids, by design, discipline, and rigor
Brokers point to multi-round bidding and rising "opening" bids as proof of value created through iterative rounds of open bidding (disguised as "negotiation"), but that process rewards bargain hunting, rarely and only surfacing a policy's true market value by coincidence, when the top two bidders happen to hit their ceilings at the same moment (after months of back and forth).
Our one-round, blind, best-and-final auction is built around how institutional capital actually prices life insurance in an asset-constrained market: each bidder's private value is independent of others', and no bidder wants to lose the asset by shading their bid below it on the chance someone else values - and bids - it higher. The result is bidders competing at their true value from the start, not negotiated up from a lowball opener.
"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 because of using 1908’s service."
Senior Insurance Advisor (CFP)
$10B RIA
1.3x
premium of our winning bids to incumbent channel
7.5%
fee (vs. brokers at 30%+), minimum of $12,500
1.8x
premium of our net to incumbent channel's
What Our Clients Say
"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."
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
"Your bids are much higher and you deliver them for our clients *months* faster than we have from other firms that we used in the past."
Director of Risk Advisory
$585B AUM wealth management arm of $1.8T asset manager
"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)
$30 billion RIA
OUR SUCCESS IS GROUNDED IN DELIVERING FOR YOU
What Your Clients Say about Us
"We were out of luck until 1908 came along. I think ours is a good example of what can be gained from your process and what it takes to get through it, which really was not bad."
$540,000 for $2M GUL
$585 billion wealth manager
"Thank you for all you've done to make this deal happen. You have an incredible work ethic and we are so fortunate that Rich made the introduction. Too bad we can't rate you on Yelp!"
$92,500 for $1M UL
$195 billion UHNW RIA
"I can't believe that they got that much for the policy. I was excited about the possibility of $125,000 and in a million years did not think I could get more than three times that for it."
$439,000 for $1.5M UL
UHNW life insurance advisor/GA
10+
capital sources reached
80%
auctions produce bids
15
days to actionable bids
60
days to funding
The art and science of price discovery in a niche, thinly traded market, ensuring maximum value for your clients
We deploy the only institutional-quality process worthy of the best, most conscientious wealth management professionals, engaging only the most reliable capital through regulated intermediaries (Providers), never fringe capital or counterparties that we aren't 100% comfortable putting across the table from you and your client.
The lowest transaction risk, most complete transparency, most effective price discovery, highest emphasis on security of client information in a secure, encrypted bid room, and highest confidence in the professional execution of a high-value engagement.
"Your bids are much higher and you deliver them for our clients *months* faster than we have from other firms that we used in the past."
Director of Risk Advisory
$585B AUM wealth management arm of $1.8T asset manager
YOUR ADVOCACY IS CRITICAL
Without you, your clients face only bad options
Is a client of your firm better off with you, their trusted wealth advisor, not responsibly engaging them about selling an unwanted or surplus life insurance policy from which they might be able to extract significant liquidity? Is there a client who wouldn’t want to at least know?
Your intimate knowledge of clients' financial planning objectives and life events that change the utility of a policy, whether purchased for protection, estate planning, or business planning, uniquely positions you to identify and create significant value from that otherwise unnecessary or unwanted asset.
90%
will unwittingly forego the opportunity altogether
5%
will engage a single buyer, not competing
5%
will engage an expensive, ineffective broker
"I cannot imagine any of my clients not wanting me to at least talk with them about the options for a policy that doesn't make sense for them to maintain any longer. And that we can assess the potential value and transact with you and the 1908 team makes it so easy and efficient."
Private Wealth Advisor (CFP)
$390B RIA
<70/70+
if less healthy/if standard health
Any UL
policy type (and convertible term)
>$500K
policy size
GIVE YOUR CLIENTS THE COMFORT THAT THEY WON'T MISS OUT
Nobody is better positioned than you to understand the underlying changes and identify opportunities to create real value
Advisors’ perception of the frequency of the opportunity to monetize clients’ policies is often grounded in the number of instances they've seen, driven primarily by how often clients ask about it - but consumer awareness remains very low, likely less than 10%.
With even just a little proactive engagement and knowing what they own and why, you can deliver high value service wins and substantial proceeds to your clients and grow your AUM. And undertaking it with us will ensure that you experience the most professional process and that your clients receive maximum value for their policies, in half the time, and for 1/3 the fees that your previous experiences might suggest.
"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."
UHNW Insurance Advisor (ChFC, CLU)
$350B RIA
Which solution better positions you in an evolving market?
A fit for principled, pragmatic life insurance agents
Do Right by Your Clients
Which approach would your clients choose, if you made them aware of the options? Which would you be able to intellectually and ethically defend, if pressed? Which would you choose for a family member?
Gain Confidence of Advisors
Which is more likely to engender the confidence of advisors and firms you want to work with? Which is more consistent with how they do business?
Comparable Compensation
Given higher winning bids, you receive compensation comparable to what you earn with broker transactions (with agents, we typically split 10% - 12.5%).
SUBSTANTIVELY THE RIGHT THING TO DO
Do Right by Clients
Which approach would your clients choose, if you made them aware of the options? Which would you choose for a family member?
ALIGNED WITH FIDUCIARY AND BEST INTEREST
Gain Confidence of Advisors
Which is more likely to engender the confidence of advisors and firms you want to work with? Which is more consistent with how they do business?
OVER MULTIPLE ENGAGEMENTS
Comparable Comp
Given higher winning bids, you receive compensation comparable to what you earn with broker transactions (with agents, we typically split 10% - 12.5%).
Insights and analysis on the market and options for your clients with surplus and unwanted life insurance.
Our quarterly e-mail newsletter delivers insights on the forces shaping market, ideas on how to identify opportunities and engage your clients, and examples of recent transactions that we have undertaken with the most sophisticated and conscientious wealth advisors, life insurance professionals, and fiduciary and Best Interest advisors of all stripes.
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