The lingering death of “life settlement” investing
Today's Financial News - Posted September 2, 2009
by J. Christoph Amberger
Baltimore, MD — TFN: Intrigued by promotions promising you five-and six-figure “payouts” on “Unclaimed Inheritances”? We did a little digging… and we found this in Der Spiegel:
Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions manage complex funds that buy up Americans’ life insurance policies and pay their premiums in return for their payouts. But angry German investors are finding that Americans aren’t dying as quickly as expected — and that only the bankers are making a buck.
Gisbert Soballa has a rather dispassionate stance toward death. The 72-year-old retired cardiologist says that, to him, dying was always “something completely normal.”
Given that, the doctor didn’t pause when his adviser at Deutsche Bank suggested a peculiar deal with death. The “db Kompass Life” fund buys up life insurance policies of Americans and assumes responsibility for paying their future premiums. When a policyholder dies, the entire payout from the policy goes to the fund. And since everybody dies, it would seem to be a fairly crisis-proof investment.
Soballa and his wife together invested €16,000 (about $23,000) into the fund. In 2007, they received a small dividend. Since then, the Bavarian couple has received quarterly statements — all of which notify him that “unfortunately, there will be no dividend payments this quarter.” So, it would appear that bankers’ betting on the demise of anonymous Americans hasn’t born much fruit.
Finish this very good article right here…
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