Life changes. So do your clients' life insurance needs. We ensure that you can maximize the value of the life insurance that they no longer need.
We deliver the first and only life settlement solution that meets the highest standards of client care for conscientious, fee-only wealth advisors at top RIAs and Best Interest-oriented, principled life insurance professionals, ensuring complete transparency, effective price discovery, rational fees, and maximum proceeds to your HNW/UHNW clients from life insurance that they no longer want or need.
About us
Who we are
Experienced capital markets professionals with deep domain expertise in the institutional market for in-force life insurance, aka “life settlements” since 2016, seven years prior as buyers.
What we do
Provide access to a universe of institutional buyers, ensuring effective and expeditious price discovery and maximum proceeds for your clients, HNW/UHNW policy owners.
How we are differemt
We deliver substantively better outcomes in a transparent, much faster, and more confidence-engendering process than any other approach available to policy owners or their advisors.
By the numbers
Undertaking a life settlement shouldn't have to be a Faustian bargain for an advisor or principled life insurance professional who wants your client to receive the maximum possible value for their surplus or unwanted life insurance. It shouldn't have to be "better than nothing" and you shouldn't have to suffer through the indignities of an opaque and expensive process to do right for your client.
After seven years as buyers, frustrated by the badly flawed approach of brokers - opaque, egregiously expensive, ineffective price discovery, and prolonged calendar - we decided that we wanted to lead the way in bringing a new level of professionalism, transparency, effective price discovery, and rational fees. And to engage fee only advisors at top RIAs.
So, we decided to take a wholly different approach. The view is better and the results speak for themselves.
2016
Year Founded
After seven years with a large private equity buyer of in-force life insurance, frustrated with opaque price discovery and poor client advocacy, we decided to change things
>30%
Higher Net Proceeds
Based on our fees alone - more w/ higher winning bids; often hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in greater proceeds than any other approach
8x-10x/25%
Economics
Average settlement multiple of surrender value and % of face value (often infinitely greater than CSV, as that approaches $0 in older insureds, and as much as 60%+ of face value)
7.5%
Fee
A transparent, simple, easy to understand fee, 7.5% of the value we help realize (winning bid - surrender value); min. $12,500. When we partner with insurance professionals, we typically split a 10% fee
The Team
All humility aside, we are the very best at what we do; we do not care about being the biggest, we care only about being the best and delivering differentiated results for you and your clients who have life insurance than they no longer want or need or may simply prefer to monetize. While we occupy only a small corner of the wealth management industry, we are wholly committed to delivering an outsized impact for our clients, the besr, most conscientoous wealth management and life insurance professionals in the country.
We started this business because we wanted to make a substantive difference in the lives of our clients. And, importantly, to have fun while we do it and work with people we like, who share our values, and who we’d want to spend time with, if we weren’t working together.
We are capital markets professionals with a deep understanding of what it means to serve HNW/UHNW clients, having worked with several of the largest and most highly regarded RIAs in the country with clients who have complex life insurance needs and portfolios.
We speak your language and deliver a disciplined, transparent, and intellectually-rigorous price discovery process, grounded in a comprehensive understanding - borne of experience - of how institutional buyers value in-force life insurance contracts. And we have a traditional client service orientation, much like you have with your clients, respecting your time, intelligence, and relationships.
PODCAST APPEARANCE -
FINANCIAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION
Hear in this episode of the Smarter Planner Podcast Belle Osvath, CFP, interview Scott about his company's innovative approach to helping financial planners work with their clients to sell life insurance policies that are no longer needed.
We work with the very best
We have been engaged by advisors across the wealth management spectrum, including many firms that assiduously avoided life settlements before learning our approach, and a few that previously used brokers, but that came to understand the profound differences in our approach and the attendant benefits for their clients.
Among our clients are three of the top five and six of the ten largest RIAs in the country (several others in the top 50) and a rapidly growing universe of BI-oriented life insurance professionals at many of the most sophisticated and client-centric insurance agencies in the country. And if you put your clients’ interests first in everything you do and would like to enable them to monetize unwanted and surplus life insurance, we’d love to work with you.
Practically speaking - our higher winning bids often result in compensation (at our typical 5%/5% split) for you that is comparable to or greater than the higher % participation in broker transactions. So, you get to do the right thing for your client and likely make comparable compensation.
10+
Top 50 HNW/UHNW RIAs, with >$800 billion AUM
10+
BGAs/IMOs/Top UHNW Insurance Producers
Several
Various Trustees, T&E attorneys, and Trust Co's
$2,550,000 winning bid
$191,250 1908 fee
$25 billion AUM RIA
91 year old healthy female
$5,700,000 GUL
Trust Owned/estate planning adjustments
$475,000 winning bid
$35,625 1908 fee
Life insurance GA
67 year old male (rare cancer)
$1,500,000 converted term (UL)
Individual owned (buy/sell agreement, post sale)
$437,400 winning bid
$32,805 1908 fee
Large national wirehouse
91 year old healthy female
$754,000 UL
Trust owned
$700,000 winning bid
$52,500 1908 fee
$9 billion AUM RIA
61 year old male (manageable cancer)
$2,000,000 converted term (UL)
Individual owned
$900,000 winning bid
$67,500 1908 fee
$25 billion AUM RIA
51 year old female (manageable cancer)
$5,000,000 convertible term
Key Man policy (retained upon sale of business)
$2,948,000 winning bid
$157,500 1908 fee
$9 billion AUM RIA
85 year old healthy female
$5,300,000 GUL
Charitable Trust owned
$2,600,000 winning bid
$50,000 1908 fee
UHNW Life Insurance Advisor
75 year old male/75 year old female
$29,000,000 GUL
Individual owned - wanted to exit premium loan
$5,300,000 winning bid
$265,000 1908 fee
UHNW insurance advisor (part of $140B RIA)
85 year old male/79 yeay old female
$12,000,000 GUL
Trust owned
$90,000 winning bid
$7,500 1908 fee
$140 billion AUM RIA
72 year old healthy male
$1,000,000 UL
Individual owned (was collateral on business loan)
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.
Director of Insurance Services (CFP)
$9 billion AUM RIA
Simple, Fast, Effective Process
Our simple, transparent, expeditious price discovery process is respectful of your and your client's time, effort, and, honestly, intelligence. We typically deliver actionable bids in 5 days (after a two-week underwriting period), consummation and funding within 60 days, all requiring 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 to move forward with the administrative effort of contracting.
Importantly, we enable the price discovery benefits of real competition among multiple credible buyers without the opacity, inefficiency, and high cost of a broker. Importantly, you are intimately engaged in the process – with end-to-end transparency and an audit trail – and understood by your client to have been the driver of a high-value service win and significant windfall from an asset that would otherwise have been forfeited for little or no benefit.
And everything is executed in a secure ShareFile bid room, not via e-mail and phone calls.
20+
BUYERS REACHED
80%
OF AUCTIONS SUCCESSFUL
15
DAYS TO COMPLETED AUCTION
60
DAYS TO FUND
A small, illiquid market, but high-quality capital and regulated counterparties.
Since 2010, the universe of buyers of in-force life insurance has become highly institutional, with many household name private equity, hedge funds, endowments, and private and public pensions having purchased policies.
But, truthfully, relative to other assets, it is a small, illiquid market, typically with fewer than 20 active buyers. So compelling that one buyer willing to pay the most for your client’s asset – an unwanted life insurance policy – to actually pay that value is the challenge, resulting in something of a bespoke market.
That it is bespoke is actually an opportunity to generate often outsized winning bids – if your partner knows how to compel buyers to bid to their value. And we do.
$5B
Face Value settled each year
$1.5B+
Capital deployed to sellers each year
10+
Regulated intermediaries to reach to capital
Our process is uniquely able to identify the maximum value of your client's policy, not just a bid required to beat the second highest.
That it is a loosely-organized market, as described above, is actually an opportunity to generate often outsized winning bids. Why?
Because the market is otherwise inefficient with very different values ascribed to a given policy - and we offer the only solution that enables policy sellers to capitalize on that.
Different buyers ascribe different values to various underlying criteria of the policy and the insured, which can result in wildly divergent valuations - borne of even otherwise seemingly small differences - for 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 (unlike the broker approach, in which the winning bidder simply has to beat the second highest bidder - not to mention subjecting your client to an opaque, confusing, prolonged "negotiation").
Our approach in uniquely effective at compelling that those differences can be capitalized upon, resulting in faster, higher bids for your clients. To see the myths that broker perpetuate about how policies are valued and on what criteria buyers will bid versus the truth - and the implications on how long it takes and how effectively value is identified - visit the Process page.
Recent Engagement
An UHNW life insurance advisor (who began using us three years ago, after years of using traditional brokers), part of a $140B RIA, approached us about a client with a large life insurance portfolio who wanted to explore the sale of $9.8M second-to-die GUL (two policies) as part of a broader estate planning exercise for the 91 year-old couple.
The below results are why this firm, and others, engage us strategically to contemplate what the best course of action might be with all of their older clients with whom they are regularly assessing the value and utility of their life insurance portfolio.
$9,800,000
GUL
$4,300,000
Winning Bid
$3,977,500
Net Proceeds (fees: 1908 5%/Advisor 2.5%)
75
Days to Complete/Fund
Region Head, CFA
$15 billion AUM RIA
"I know our advisors just added a new tool to their toolbox and I’m excited to see our teams collaborate."
Partner (CLU, ChFC)
$10 billion in-force life insurance advisor (part of $140B RIA)
"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
$120 billion AUM 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."
Senior Insurance Advisor (CFP)
$9 billion AUM 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."
Vice President (CFP, CLU)
Large national life insurance broker
"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."
Managing Director (ChFC, CLU)
$30 billion AUM UHNW RIA
"1908's model has turned this sector upside down amidst all these cowboy brokers."
A more frequent and substantive opportunity to do the right thing for clients and their families than most are aware
Each year, more than 40,000 HNW/UHNW households >72 years old forfeit (lapse or surrender) $75 billion of the $1.5 trillion of in-force permanent and convertible term life insurance, at least $50 billion of which likely has value in excess of surrender value to institutional buyers. But less than 10% of the policies are presented to market, half through direct buyers that you see on TV (and are unlikely to pay a competitive bid, for lack of competition) and the other half through egregiously expensive brokers that run ineffective price discovery and extract a third of the value of the transaction in commissions.
In order to create a better outcome for your client than lapse or surrender (or even keeping a policy that is not of sufficient utility to justify ongoing premiums), all you need is to know what to look for - from the most obvious observations, like there is no longer a need for a policy, to more nuanced analyses about the relative utility of a policy - and to start the conversation. And we can help with that.
>50%
>72 HNW/UHNW own at least one policy
>80%
lapsed or surrendered; 3% - 4% annually
8x/25%
Avg. settlement multiple of CSV and % of face value
What Sells
UL/VUL/Term
POLICY TYPES
Any permanent, cash value - or convertible into cash value - policy can work, depending on other factors (Whole Life policies rarely work)
$500K - $50M
POLICY SIZE
Although we can help with smaller policies, there is little market demand, given the underwriting and admin costs relative to potential return
<72
IF UNHEALTHY
This is a function of duration demand in the market, the longest of which is about 16 years (life expectancy)
>72
IF HEALTHY
For women, add two years and for joint policies on which both are alive, add another two years before a policy is likely to work
Without you, your clients are on their own, facing only bad outcomes.
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.
Without you, your clients face only bad and sub-optimal outcomes, foregoing significant proceeds altogether, which happens 90% of the time, and receiving far less than they should, by engaging intermediaries who will either extract egregious fees - after a badly flawed price discovery process - or offer less than a competitive bidder would offer.
90%
will miss out entirely
5%
will pay egregious commissions to a broker
5%
will receive non-competitive offer from single buyer
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 be of service.
Thank you.