From the Archive – April 2012

Life Assurance (sometimes, US-style, Life Insurance) is a recurring topic at our meetings. It has been mentioned over 60 times, and seven speakers have chosen it as their topic – from James Walker in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1998 to Koen Lozie in Cyprus in 2008. It is a difficult topic, not least because jurisdictions vary widely in their treatment of premiums, investment income and proceeds on maturity or surrender. On the other hand, an offshore policy offers an investment platform not dissimilar to that offered by an offshore trust, while being a good deal easier to understand, and the life assurance industry is such a powerful lobby that many practitioners consider a life policy inherently less prone to tax-driven attack than any kind of trust structure. Our speakers up to now have mostly considered the kind of endowment policy with a single premium or multiple premiums maturing on death or prior surrender which is in common use, but Michael Richardson in Cannes will take us into territory which will be new to most of us. He calls it Bespoke Life Assurance.