Over the past year, life insurance has grown dramatically. Life settlement-backed securities have seen tremendous growth in the past 12 months. The life settlement market expanded in 2006 to approximately $12 billion. While this number is still a fraction of what some predict will be the size in 10 years, it still represents a significant increase over the prior year. The market for life settlements grows as financial institutions become involved in unprecedented ways via securities of life insurance policies or other new synthetic structures.
For the second year, Institutional Investor Journals and the Life Insurance Settlement Association (LISA) have published a special section on life settlements in the Summer 2007 issue of The Journal of Structured Finance.
"As the secondary market for life insurance draws greater interest from institutional investors and becomes more widely known among senior consumers, we see an increased need for authoritative information on this topic," stated Doug Head, Executive Director of LISA. "This special section of The Journal of Structured Finance is written by industry experts explaining the secondary market supply chain, product flow constraints, operational challenges of providers, minimizing portfolio risk of investors, market inefficiencies, and an analysis of the value to the consumer." LISA is the life settlement industry's largest trade association and regarded as "the voice of the industry."
Over the next ten years life insurance rates are expected to continue to grow do the the aging of a generation, the "baby-boomers" are settling into that well deserved vacation and with the nagging Social Security issues it seems only right to take out life insurance, in case sometihng does happen.
