What is a Life Settlement Calculator?
A life settlement calculator is a tool that analyzes factors related to your health and life insurance policy to help you determine if you can sell the policy and how much it’s worth.
Most life settlement calculators ask for your gender, age, policy type, and policy payout — then ask for contact information before providing an estimate of your buyout value. More advanced life settlement calculators like ours ask for additional information such as your policy carrier and current health status to provide a more accurate estimate.
How Does Our Life Settlement Calculator Work?
Using our life settlement calculator is easy. Just fill out the fields in our form and click the “See your policy value” button at the bottom of the page. After clicking the button, you’ll be taken to a separate page that shows an estimate of how much your policy is worth and other helpful information. At the bottom of the page, we have a Valuation by Health Status section, which shows how your health status effects the sale offer you’re shown. You may be surprised to find that you can actually make more money by selling the policy and investing the proceeds than you would by holding onto it for the death benefit.
For additional help finding out how much your policy is worth or to continue with the life settlement process, you can contact our team of life settlement experts. We’ll provide a free assessment and can answer all your questions about life settlements. If you’re interested in selling your policy, we can also help you start the process. Contact us to learn more.
Limitations of Life Settlement Calculators
In most cases, quick online life settlement calculators cannot replace the in-depth medical underwriting process required to accurately estimate the value of that policy. Any worthwhile life settlement calculator should ask for the following information:
- Policyholder Age
- Policyholder Gender
- Health Status
- Policy Type
- Policy Carrier
- Policy Issue Class
- Age at Issue (if applicable)
- Policy Size (also known as Face Amount or Death Benefit)
If you see a life settlement calculator that doesn’t ask for all of the information above, it cannot give you an accurate estimate of how much your life insurance policy is worth.
Furthermore, many life settlement calculators are designed to give unrealistically high estimates so policyholders will be more interested in working with them. An easy way to identify these instances is when you’re given a broad range for your life insurance payout, such as between $10,000 and $150,000. The company’s goal is to entice you with a high potential offer in order to get you on the phone, but the real offer may be significantly less.
To get an accurate estimate of your potential life insurance payout, the best way to proceed is by contacting a life settlement company that can verify your eligibility and review all of the factors affecting your policy’s value. If you’d like an idea of the value before contacting anyone, the information below will give you a much better idea than any online life settlement calculator.
How is a Life Settlement's Value Calculated?
Some life settlement calculators will give you an estimate solely based on the information collected from eligibility related questions. However, the value of a life settlement is tied to several other factors as well. To help you determine what your life insurance is worth, you should be aware of all the factors that affect life settlement valuation. Here is the comprehensive list of factors used to calculate the value of a life settlement.
Gender
The shorter your life expectancy, the more valuable your life insurance policy will be to a buyer, and gender makes a significant difference in that outlook. Data is used from reports from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention shows that in 2018, the average life expectancy for U.S. males was 76.2 years, compared to 81.2 years for females. That continuing life expectancy gap tends to mean that, other factors being equal, life insurance policies covering men fetch higher values in the life settlements market.
Health Status
Your health condition is a factor sell your life insurance policy calculators use to help determine how much your policy is worth. This is because health status affects your life expectancy and, as you can probably guess, that number will be lower if you have serious health problems. It may seem odd to think of poor health as being a financial asset, but because life settlement buyers want to minimize the number of years they will have to pay a seller’s insurance premiums, the sicker you are, the more valuable your policy will be.
Age
Beyond eligibility, your age also affects the value of a life settlement for your insurance policy. In most cases, the older you are, the more highly a life settlement investor will value your life insurance policy, and the estimate you receive from a life settlement calculator will reflect that fact. Your current age is one of the key variables in estimating your settlement, a gauge that buyers use to help determine how much they are willing to offer for your policy.
Policy Size
Much like age, policy size is also considered for an eligibility factor, but beyond the base threshold that determines whether you can sell your policy— you’ll discover that policy size also impacts its value in the life settlements market. In general, a policy with a bigger death benefit will pay out a higher price since it means the life settlement company who purchased the policy will collect a larger sum upon the passing on the policyholder.
Premium Costs
Life settlement investors pay all future premiums until the policy matures upon the death of the person who is insured, they consider that expense when evaluating a policy’s worth.. They multiply the annual premium amount by the insured person’s estimated life expectancy in years. The longer the life expectancy, the more those premium costs add up, and the less buyers will be willing to pay for a policy.
Policy Loans
If you have an outstanding loan against your life insurance policy, prospective buyers will factor that into buying your policy and how much they will offer you for a buyout. That’s because, if you should pass away before paying off the loan, the amount you owe, including the principle balance and the interest will be deducted from the death benefit the company who purchased the life insurance policy.
Policy Type
The type of life insurance policy you own makes a difference in a life settlement. The only life insurance polices that can be sold for a life settlement are whole, universal, variable, and convertible term policies. Not all eligible life insurance policies are worth the same. Many are surprised to find out that some policy types are worth more than others. A universal life policy will usually pay the highest price to the seller, but the other eligible policy types can still expect favorable results and a significant sum when selling through a life settlement.
Investor Discount Rate
A life expectancy estimate is not a certainty. Life settlement buyers can’t make a guaranteed projection of how much they will pay in premiums over the life of a policy. It’s difficult to make comparison between the potential returns of a life settlement purchase and the returns that might be possible from other investments. To account for uncertainties, investors apply a discount rate that affects the value of a life settlement for the seller. The higher the discount rate, the less money is offered for the policy. The lower the discount rate, the more money you will receive.
Life Insurance Issuer
Prospective buyers will also consider the financial stability of your life insurance issuer, because they want to be sure the company will be able to pay the death benefit claim when it comes due. They will look at how insurance industry rating agencies assess the company’s solvency, and the amount they bid will reflect how high that rating is. If the rating is too low, the life settlement provider might consider the policy too risky to bid on at all.
Buyer's Risk
The biggest risk to the buyer of your life insurance policy is that you will live a lot longer than expected. While experts can use actuarial tables and other tools to make general projections about the life expectancy of someone of your age, gender, health and lifestyle, they can’t make any guaranteed predictions of how long an individual person will live. A potential buyer’s assumes that risk with the value they put on your life settlement offer.
What are the Eligibility Requirements
For a Life or Viatical Settlement?
Before you can determine how much your life insurance policy is worth, you need to determine whether you’re eligible to sell it at all. A life settlement calculator will ask a few basic questions to determine if you qualify for a life or viatical settlement. In general, here are the eligibility requirements that help life settlement companies determine if they can (or will) buy out your life insurance policy:
Policyholder Age
In most cases, you must be 70 years old to qualify for a life settlement. Viatical settlements may be an option for younger policyholders if they have a chronic or terminal illness.
Policy Age
Each state has their own regulations on waiting periods (2-5 years) that determines how long you must own a life insurance policy before you can sell it through a life settlement.
Policy Value
The policy value of your life insurance will determine your eligibility. Most life settlement companies will not buy out a life insurance policy unless it has a face value of $50,000 or more.
Policy Type
There are only a few types of life insurance policies that can be sold through a life settlement. The life insurance policies are whole, universal, variable, and convertible term policies.
Get Your Free Life Settlement Valuation
While our life settlement calculator provides an estimate up to 89.2% accurate, the most reliable estimate will come from a free thorough assessment from our team of experts. We’ll start by determining your eligibility, then calculate the value of selling your policy through a life settlement. The quote we provide is absolutely free, and you are under no obligation to sell your policy because you receive this information.
If you decide to move forward with the transaction, Harbor Life will handle all of the legal paperwork and help you maximize the value of your policy by seeking bids from our network of buyers. By getting multiple offers, the sale price goes up and you get more value for your policy. If you’re interested in calculating the true value of selling your life insurance policy, fill out the form below or contact us to learn more.
