The Insurance Department of the state of California has posted the list on its website of the life settlement providers allowed to transact in the state.  The list comprises two categories, companies previously licensed and those that are grandfathered pending the outcome of a license application review.  Among the companies listed are industry leaders, including Q Capital Strategies, LLC.  The links to the listings are below:

Companies previously licensed

Companies authorized/grandfathered while license application is pending

The lists are continually updated, so it is worth checking back regularly to ensure that the company you are working with is properly licensed.

Q Capital Strategies’ President and CEO, Steven Shapiro, will be speaking on a panel at Deal Flow Media’s Life Settlement Conference in Las Vegas on October 5th.  Mr. Shapiro will speaking on the topic titled “Competing Opportunities & Tradeoffs: Distressed Portfolios vs. Primary Origination.”  The panel will discuss the issues related to purchasing portfolios of policies, the related risks in such transactions, and comparing such transactions to primary purchases in the marketplace.  “I think this is an extremely pertinent topic in today’s marketplace,” said Shapiro, “we are seeing new potential investors exploring both opportunities in the marketplace.  These investors need to understand the benefits and challenges inherent in both options.”  The Life Settlement Conference runs from October 4-5, 2010 at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas.  More than 250 attendees are expected to turn out and learn about the latest trends in the life settlement marketplace.

With the recent release of the United States Government Accountability Office (”GAO”) and SEC reports/studies, the life settlement industry got its first reliable source of industry data.  It is about time!  After many years of guessing what the size of the industry is or how much value is created for consumers, the industry now has some hard figures from the GAO to hang its hat on.  And, I believe, these are really amazing figures.  From 2006-2009, $35.5 billion face value of life insurance was sold in the secondary market to investors.  In these transactions, the policy owners received approximately $6.2 billion in cash proceeds, compared to the cash surrender value of these policies of $558 million.  Thus, the life settlement industry put $5.6 billion of money into consumers’ pockets in excess of their only alternative, surrendering the policy back to the life insurance company.  In today’s challenging economic environment, there cannot be many industries out there that are putting more cash into consumers’ wallets.   Now is the time to take this hard data and introduce millions more to the consumer-friendly life settlement industry.

New York State’s Insurance Department issued a list of 33 life settlement providers that met the requirements to be grandfathered during the application review process.  The list of companies, including the largest providers in the industry, was much bigger than many industry observers had expected.  Q Capital is one of the providers that is allowed to continue operating under the current guidelines.  The procedure calls for these companies to have the authority to close transactions in the state while the insurance department reviews their applications.  The providers will have to use the forms filed with the state for transaction closings.  The full list of providers is available here.