Author: Greg Winterton

It’s incredibly difficult to measure the size of the life ILS market in terms of assets under management held by investment funds. There’s little publicly available data, and naturally, many asset managers won’t provide information unless they’re forced to. So, we wanted to ask our readers what they thought, with a little bit of educated guessing on our part. We offered three options: below $10bn, between $10 and $25bn, and over $25bn. The middle option won out in the end, and fairly convincingly; almost two-thirds of our readers think that the market is between $10 and $25bn in AUM. It’s…

Technology advances are driving improved processes in all industries and markets, and the longevity markets are no different. Life Risk News’ Greg Winterton spoke to Mark Venn, Director at ClearLife, to learn more about his firm and how technology is impacting longevity investors. GW: Mark, yourself and Chris Stuart, ClearLife CTO, worked together at Mizuho before setting up ClearLife. What was the ‘eureka’ moment that led to the decision to launch your own firm? MV: If I’m being completely honest, it was probably more hubris than “eureka”! After three years of investing in life settlements – and 14 years in…

Reasons abound why seniors in the United States might seek to sell their whole life insurance policy to a third-party investor. Two of the most frequently cited are that the insured simply can’t afford the premiums anymore – and so selling their policy via a life settlement gets them more cash than the surrender value offered by the insurance company – and the need to be able to fund medical bills or pay off a mortgage. Many life settlement sales run into five, six, and even seven figures, depending on the policy value. But the more financially savvy American seniors…

Life settlement secondary market transaction data continues to encourage

Life Risk News UK Pension Risk Transfer Consultants roundtable

Talk to almost any life settlement broker and they’ll tell you that they saw an uptick in activity in the industry’s secondary market in 2022 when compared to the prior year. Corroborating those views, however, isn’t possible until the end of the Spring and early Summer each year, when trade body the Life Insurance Settlement Association and industry trade magazine The Life Settlement Report, part of The Deal, publish their own data which cover transactions in the secondary market. So, ahead of these data releases, Life Risk News asked our readers, Do You Think There Were More Secondary Market Life…

Life Risk News Q&A with Thomas Deinet

Positive trends in the life settlement market, like in other asset classes, are to be cautiously welcomed

The recent banking crisis on both sides of the Atlantic has shone a light in asset management circles on the due diligence process undertaken by end investors on their counterparties. A significant percentage of the venture capital industry faced a potential liquidity crisis, and consequently, investors are looking more closely at counterparty risks of all types, not only at the asset manager level, but through to the underlying fund or managed account portfolio level as well. Just like many other asset classes in the private markets, counterparty risk in the life risk investing world comes in many forms. In markets…

Life Risk News’ Roundtable for the April, 2023 issue