Phoenix Prepares To Launch Life Settlement Business

- Noted that Phoenix would be competing with other life settlement companies for brokerage general agency business.

- Reported that brokerage general agencies seem to be willing to send life settlement business to Phoenix, even if Phoenix pays a lower commission rate.

- Suggested that the lower commissions and lower internal rate of return expectations will help make Phoenix Life Solutions competitive.

Macklem and another panel discussion speaker, Hasham Malik, chief capital markets officer with Peachtree Settlement Funding, Boynton Beach, Fla., also talked about ways to apply the life settlements approach to new products.

Phoenix Life Solutions will invest in level-premium term policies, and it eventually might go after annuities, Macklem said.

"In the long term," he said, "there are possibilities there as well as with [immediate annuities]."

Malik said he thinks there are opportunities to profit from investing in any type of insurance product that is vulnerable to pricing inefficiencies.

Malik also talked about Peachtree finance strategies.

Peachtree is developing an open-ended, pass-through hedge fund that will be based in the United Kingdom, and it also is working with a European bank to develop a structured note program that will offer capital protection of up to 80%, Malik said.

The note program will give institutional investors a chance to invest in life settlements without spending hundreds of millions of dollars, Malik said.