July 18th, 2009, 9:03 am
QuoteOriginally posted by: LTrainSlightly OTObviously I don't know about this specific position, but I was approached outside of work by one of these life insurance critters. The game: they purchase a life insurance policy in my name, they pay all premiums, and after two years I get a $100k lump sum or the option to take-over the policy. I believe the system works because life insurance policies are becoming tradable. The broker-critter is speculating that he can sell my policy for more $$$ than their premium outlay. Something is magic about the two year number, but Im not sure what. They do not plan to keep the policy so I think the actuarial data are not relevent. I also speculate that they are creating CDO-like structures of policies to sell into the secondary market. All they care about is the market value of the policy, not my longevity, or the death benefit. Won't this create some very perverse incentives ? In the US, they got some unfortunate side effects when they privatized the prison system. Strong economic interests in getting people incarcerated can lead to bad things.And now we get easily tradeable derivatives that are valuable when life-expectancy is low, possibly on a person to person basis ?