A positive for the industry could come from the proposed increase in tax rates for upper-income Americans, “which could help demand for tax-advantaged policies,” according to a note to investors by Andrew Kligerman, an analyst for UBS, New York.

Kligerman says an administration budget proposal to limit tax avoidance on life settlement arrangements would hurt life settlement firms, but he believes that strikes a positive note for life insurers’ policy margins, which are partly supported by lapse rates.

Report issued in January 2009 by the Insurance Studies Institute.

A federal program that collects information about possible cases of money laundering is receiving some reports on life settlement transactions.

Officials at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a branch of the U.S. Treasury Department, have discussed those reports in a catalogue of about 1,300 “suspicious activity reports” that insurers filed with FinCen from May 2007 to May 2008.

At the start of the year, many life insurers worried that rising unemployment and declining portfolio values would increase consumer demand for life settlements as a source of cash. Midway through 2009, we’ve seen the opposite. With few exceptions, brokers in the $12 billion life settlements industry report sluggish sales at sharply reduced prices.

As life settlements (or viatical settlements), have grown enormously in popularity and use over the past few years, regulation of this secondary market has become a headline issue for many states, garnering a great deal of attention (and controversy) among national organizations such as the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and the National Conference of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL). Consumers, institutional investors, financial advisors, and the “primary market” insurers, as well as regulators and public policy makers are all very interested in the handling of life settlements.