Life settlements: beyond the perfect storm

Events since mid-2007 have given the search for new investment themes extra impetus. Of all those to emerge in recent years, life settlements have perhaps provided the outstanding success story

Perhaps more than any other asset class, life settlements demonstrated how the endless quest for absolute returns can be fulfilled through genuine alternatives – something truly different, conspicuously unusual and, virtually, uncorrelated with more traditional investments. More than that, life settlements have shown that a combination of clarity, social responsibility, scrutiny and expert monitoring can maintain success even amid the most-demanding circumstances – specifically, those we have just experienced. This much was recently underlined by Life Settlements: A Buyers’ Market for...