״Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.״
~ C.S. Lewis
Our Values Drive Us
It would have been easier for us to have simply gone along. To have played the game. It would have been financially rewarding to have participated in the obfuscations and favorable economics of the incumbent distribution channel that takes so much of your client's money. To have simply done what others have done for 20 years, hiding behind specious claims of being fiduciaries while charging 30% fees.
But, we're not wired that way. And we don't shrink from a righteous fight.
We are, instead, on a mission to disrupt and replace a badly broken distribution channel whose members have for years placed their economic interests ahead of those of their clients. And it is manifest in how we engage you and the market, the results that we help you get for your clients, and how we charge for our service.
1908 is not just a faster, cheaper broker. This is simply a much better process and one with equitable economics for our clients.
Founder, $7B RIA
We never looked for life settlements because they can be such a headache and the fees are crazy. You are a breath of fresh air.
Advisor, $14B RIA
...their (1908's) transparent, honest approach has turned this sector upside down amidst all these cowboy brokers.
Insurance Advisor
Uncomfortable truth #2
Not all are not receptive.
Those wealth advisors and insurance producers who appreciate and value the transparency, smarter price discovery, 7.5% fees, and higher proceeds to clients from the sale of an unwanted life insurance policy borne of our approach are enthusiastic clients and supporters of the change that we are driving.
Those who value their participation in the 30% commission from a life settlement broker more than doing the right thing for their client, however, are, well, far less enthusiastic about what we are doing.
If you're among the former, we'd love to talk. We could do great things together for your clients.
Uncomfortable truth #1
Change was long overdue.
In what other financial transactions do those performing price discovery receive one-third of the value of the subsequent transaction? Our estimate is that excessive fees cost policy sellers at least $100,000,000 a year - going into the pockets of those simply performing price discovery. And in what other financial transaction are sellers given less of a sense of what is happening through the process and how buyers value their asset? There isn't a more opaque price discovery process in any financial market.
So, what does it mean that instead of refuting what we observe about the incumbent channel's inefficiency, opacity, and egregious fees, brokers expend significant energy and time complaining (literally) that we are somehow "tricking" the most conscientious wealth advisors and insurance professionals in the country into using our solution for their clients who might wish to sell an unwanted life insurance policy?
That we’re doing something right and that we're over the target.
Fighting a status quo that enriches brokers at your clients' great expense...
alone.
Why so thinly penetrated a solution?
Badly Flawed Distribution
More than $50 billion of policies that would otherwise have settlement value is forfeited by older HNW insureds each year, but less than $5 billion is settled, costing tens of thousands of those policy owners, whose advisors never even discuss the option with them, $10 billion a year in forgone proceeds. Why?
The reason is simple - the vast majority of wealth advisors and insurance professionals are so uncomfortable with brokers' business practices, opacity, confusing processes, and outrageous fees that they won't even discuss the option, regardless of the significant benefits that a sale can generate.
Fighting a status quo that enriches brokers at your clients' great expense...
alone.
Uncomfortable truth #1
Change was long overdue.
In what other financial transactions do those performing price discovery receive one-third of the value of the subsequent transaction? Our estimate is that excessive fees cost policy sellers at least $100,000,000 a year - going into the pockets of those simply performing price discovery. And in what other financial transaction are sellers given less of a sense of what is happening through the process and how buyers value their asset? There isn't a more opaque price discovery process in any financial market.
So, what does it mean that instead of refuting what we observe about the incumbent channel's inefficiency, opacity, and egregious fees, brokers expend significant energy and time complaining (literally) that we are somehow "tricking" the most conscientious wealth advisors and insurance professionals in the country into using our solution for their clients who might wish to sell an unwanted life insurance policy?
That we’re doing something right and that we're over the target.
Uncomfortable truth #2
Not all are not receptive.
Those wealth advisors and insurance producers who appreciate and value the transparency, smarter price discovery, 7.5% fees, and higher proceeds to clients from the sale of an unwanted life insurance policy borne of our approach are enthusiastic clients and supporters of the change that we are driving.
Those who value their participation in the 30% commission from a life settlement broker more than doing the right thing for their client, however, are, well, far less enthusiastic about what we are doing.
If you're among the former, we'd love to talk. We could do great things together for your clients.
Why so thinly penetrated a solution?
Badly Flawed Distribution
More than $50 billion of policies that would otherwise have settlement value is forfeited by older HNW insureds each year, but less than $5 billion is settled, costing tens of thousands of those policy owners, whose advisors never even discuss the option with them, $10 billion a year in forgone proceeds. Why?
The reason is simple - the vast majority of wealth advisors and insurance professionals are so uncomfortable with brokers' business practices, opacity, confusing processes, and outrageous fees that they won't even discuss the option, regardless of the significant benefits that a sale can generate.
Fundamentally, Boldly Different
We are, deliberately and by design, not a broker, but rather an advisor to fiduciaries and fiduciary-minded wealth advisors and life insurance producers, enabling you to engage, on your client's behalf, a universe of the top institutional buyers of in-force life insurance.
With extensive industry experience and a philosophy of transparency and abundance, not opacity and scarcity, we designed a price discovery process that is materially different from and substantially better than the badly flawed incumbent channel of life settlement brokers. Since 2016, our approach has combined the benefits of competition among multiple credible buyers (and an inherently smarter auction process) with the efficiency and transparency benefits of direct engagement between you and those buyers (actually, with their regulated market partners, the Providers).
This all enables us to deliver you, the trusted wealth and insurance advisor to your clients, transparent, efficient, and effective price discovery, with actionable bids in less than 10 days (vs. 45 - 60 with brokers) and at a service fee 1/4 of the commission that brokers charge, ensuring net proceeds for your client that are at least 40% higher than any other means to engage the market.
Engaged Advisor
We are an advisor to you, while you remain an advisor to your client, not a passive third party to a brokered transaction - and you receive a fee for service, not a commission.
Effective Auction
Comprehensive, blind, best-and-final, ("private value") auction ensures higher gross winning bids than "common value" auctions. Samples here.
Respect
We do not waste your time or insult your intelligence with misleading descriptions of superfluous activities to justify an otherwise indefensible commission
Equitable Fee
7.5% of the gross proceeds less the cash surrender value (min of $7,500) vs. brokers' >30% (often confusingly described as a % of face value).
Transparent
You are in the bid room, seeing every interaction with each stakeholder, not relying on our characterizations of interactions and demand.
Simple, Honest
We remove non-value-add steps that brokers use to create the illusion of complexity, resulting in much faster price discovery and completion.
Auditable
All interactions with bidders take place in the bid room (no e-mail, phone, etc.), so a comprehensive audit trail is created for future reference and analysis.
Secure
All document sharing and storage takes place on an encrypted ShareFile platform, ensuring maximum security of all client information; no e-mail.