Life Settlements: Diversification and Portfolio Optimization

This book investigates the benefit of life settlements to a portfolio of investment securities. A life settlements is the secondary trade of an unneeded life policy. Unlike traditional securities, life settlements are not correlated to stock markets or interest rates. This book provides an extensive background on life settlements and empirically determined that a portfolio of investments including life settlements yields a higher return at a lower risk than a portfolio without life settlements. In addition, this book categorizes life settlements in order to explore differentiation opportunities within life settlements. By applying among others the concept of duration and convexity to life settlements, possible differences among life settlements can be identified. This is a relevant finding because it allows investors to apply duration as an additional criterion in selecting life settlements.