Author
Asst Prof Yogendra Jain
Organisation/Institution
UPES, Dehradun
Country
INDIA
Panel
Banking and Finance
Title
Regulating Life Settlements in Emerging Markets: A Systematic Review with Insights from India and the United States
Abstract
With time, the law and economics of insurance have advanced from considering it as a security measure to counting it as an asset class. Many companies are providing loans against these life insurance policies, accepting the ‘property’ nature of life insurance behind the veil . Recently the world witnessed sudden deaths at large scale during the Covid-19 epidemic. In such a situation of crisis, a secondary market assignment of life insurance policy could have been a boon for any person facing financial difficulty or not having a living family member/nominee. This market flourished during HIV-AIDS crisis in the USA and has shown steady growth since then. However, in India, the doors for secondary market trading were closed in 2015 via a statutory amendment. The current academia is divided on necessity of the requirement of insurable interest on the secondary market assignment of insurance policy. Other legal issues like moral hazard, and ethics of trading on life are debatable as well. The preliminary investigation revealed a scarcity of papers discussing these legal considerations around life settlements. However, five out of the top 10 countries in the life insurance global ranking are emerging markets including India having immense potential for life settlements market . Thus, the researcher has done a scientific systematic literature review using PRISMA Mehtod along with reviewing selected papers at full length, focusing on the legal and related economic considerations, to produce valuable insights for the emerging market. This paper is the only endeavour to pursue SLR on legal issues and put them in a place with the aim to ignite the discussion on legal considerations of life settlements. Importantly, this paper has considered India as an emerging market for reference and USA as a reference for established market. This paper adopted a theoretical approach to fulfill the need for legal analysis complimented with secondary data analysis. Keywords- Life Settlements, secondary market, Life Insurance, Longevity, Viatical Settlement, systematic Risk, Trading of life insurance
Biography
Yogendra Jain is working as assistant professor of law at UPES, Dehradun. He completed LL.M. from National University of Juridical Sciences Kolkata in 2017 and practiced law at Madhya Pradesh High Court for a brief period of one and a half year. He has been working as full time assistant professor since January 2019. In the line of stepping up his career he started pursuing PhD from his alma mater National University of Juridical Sciences in 2020. He has ABDC listed publication to his credit and his papers has been considered for various reputed conferences.
