Life insurance buyers may want to know that they can get a good price for unwanted policies.
Arthur Fliegelman, a vice president at Moody's Investors Service, New York, writes about the possible relationship between the primary life insurance market and the secondary life market in a new commentary.
Many life insurance industry executives worry that growth in life settlements could hurt life insurers' profits, by increasing the percentage of older, sicker insureds who keep their policies until they die.
But news about problems in the life settlement market may have contributed to a dramatic slide in life sales has started to ease up only in the past few weeks, Fliegelman writes.
Some investors have lost money on life settlement investments this year, regulators have increased regulatory scrutiny of the life settlement industry, and availability of premium financing has dropped.
