Variable life insurance policies with investment components qualify for life settlements. Settlement value depends on the guaranteed death benefit, the insured's age and health, and premium obligations.
Variable Life Insurance
Variable life policies tie cash value to investment performance. When markets underperform — or when costs of insurance rise — these policies can become expensive to maintain with diminishing returns. The secondary market may offer significantly more than walking away.
Get a Market ValuationVariable life insurance was designed to combine a death benefit with market-linked investment growth. In favorable conditions, cash values can grow significantly. In unfavorable conditions — poor fund performance, rising mortality costs, extended low returns — the policy becomes a drain.
If you're facing rising costs of insurance, poor fund performance, or the choice between pumping more money in and walking away — there's a better option.
The death benefit your insurer owes under the policy doesn't disappear just because the cash value has underperformed. That obligation has value on the secondary market — often substantial value.
Institutional buyers evaluate variable life policies differently than individual policyholders do. What looks like a problem from your vantage point often looks like an opportunity from theirs.
Death benefit is still guaranteed
Variable life policies typically guarantee a minimum death benefit regardless of subaccount performance, as long as the policy remains in force. Buyers price that guarantee into their offers.
Investment subaccounts can be reallocated
Institutional buyers can shift subaccount allocations to optimize the policy's performance for their specific investment mandate — something individual policyholders rarely do strategically.
Different time horizons and risk profiles
Life settlement funds manage diversified portfolios across hundreds of policies. A variable policy that feels risky to an individual policyholder is modest, manageable exposure in a diversified institutional portfolio.
When you contact your insurance company about your underperforming variable policy, they will offer you the cash surrender value. That number reflects the current account value of your subaccounts, minus surrender charges.
When we take the same policy to institutional buyers, they bid based on the death benefit — the full face value of what they'll eventually receive. That's an entirely different calculation, and the difference is often significant.
Surrender Value
What the insurer offers
Based on current subaccount performance, minus charges. Set by the insurance company.
Market Value
What the market will pay
Based on the death benefit obligation. Set by competitive institutional bidding.
We'll evaluate your variable life policy and present competitive offers from institutional buyers. No obligation. No pressure. Just a real number.
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Yes. Variable life policies qualify for life settlements. The settlement value is based primarily on the guaranteed death benefit, your age and health, and ongoing premium costs.
The settlement value is based on the guaranteed death benefit rather than the investment account performance. However, a policy with poor investment performance and rising costs may be an especially good candidate for a settlement.