The Life Insurance Settlement Association brought life settlement providers, life settlement brokers, and other life settlement industry players to Washington this week for LISA's 24th annual spring life settlement conference.
LISA provided its usual great slate of sessions.
Nelson Taplin Goldwater Consultants' Co-President Derek Wooley talked about how LISA is being more proactive about its regulatory efforts, and about how LISA and NTG have been promoting the life settlement market.
Traci Davis, from Elevation Underwriting, spoke about the latest advances in electronic health records and what these developments may mean for the life settlement industry. One challenge is that the information in the records is often spotty. But, one key advantage is that retrieving them may take just days, instead of weeks.
Scott Harris, from Magna Life Settlements, showed some of the key pointers and pitfalls of life settlement marketing. Among the pitfalls are regulatory concerns, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy rules for protecting the personally identifiable information collected from policy sellers. Harris also talked about the need for operational excellence, to reduce the number of touch-points needed with a life insurance policy seller.
Speakers Chris Conway, Vince Granieri, John Collins, Steven Shapiro and Michael Fasano participated in a panel discussion of short-form underwriting. Short-form underwriting is used in the life settlement and viatical settlement industries to more quickly arrive at a life expectancy estimate. Among the panelists' recommendations was that life settlement firms should be the most conservative when the least amount of information is present. Panelists also recommended tailoring the short-form questionnaires to fit the demographics of the consumers who will be filling out the questionnaires.
