Betting on Death Life Settlement

Maurice Lowinger has been able to spot trends years before people can even see them coming. In 1950 Lowinger was one of the first to import electronics from Japan into the United States. About 20 years later they saw a potential in the calculator market, which they marketed one of the first calculators in the 1970’s.

The Lowinger family is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is now hoping to cash in on the next trend—life settlements.

The life settlement industry is where people buy unwanted life insurance policies. The past couple of years the business has grown substantially as elders are looking to get rid of their unwanted policies. The people who are mainly interested in buying these policies include hedge fund managers, speculators, and Wall Street Banks who are all hoping the sellers are going to die sooner rather than later so that they will cash in on the death benefits.

Some of the first people to see the benefits in investing in life settlements were the wealthy Europeans and hedge funds. The Assured Fund is a London who exclusively invests in life settlements averaged a 10% return in the first 3 years of operations.

Securities and Exchange Commission Involvement
This business is attracting the attention of regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission. They are finding that some hedge funds are overstating their returns and misappropriating millions of dollars. Big unions and pension funds are being looked at because of shady practices such as scheming.

Investors need to be careful of life settlements. A common problem with life settlement funds is that some promoters promise unrealistic returns based on unrealistic mortality projections. Even legit investment opportunities can lose because so much of the return is based on luck, which is the expectation that the person who is selling their life settlement will die within a given time.

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