Sleeping With One Eye Open ...

Are you worth more dead or alive? The answer to that question may just depend on who you ask and, of course, how you've structured your life insurance portfolio. A recent trend in the life insurance industry has caused a great deal of concern with not only life insurance companies, but also with life insurance regulators. Stranger-oriented life insurance, or STOLI for short, are arrangements in which investors purchase a life insurance policy on an individual and collect the death benefit if that individual dies while coverage is in force. Here's an example of how such an arrangement may work. An investor offers to pay the life insurance premiums on a new policy for Bill. If Bill dies during a pre-determined period of time (say the first 5 years of the policy), then Bill's beneficiari