How life-cover policies could make you 9.9% a year
In the same way that traded endowment policies allow people to sell unwanted policies rather than accept the surrender value from the insurer, so the US Traded Life Interest market allows people to sell their life-cover policies before they die, says the Investors Chronicle. Investors buy at discounts to their final value - but at higher prices than the surrender value available - and take over the premiums, so as to receive the full policy value when the original holder dies. This specialist asset class is now available through the closed-end US TLI fund, a listed Guernsey company run by Allianz Dresdner. If current calculations of life expectancy are correct, the fund will yield 9.9% a year (a two-year increase in life expectancy would lower the yield to 7.4%). The fund is hedged into sterling to protect against currency risk.
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