Profiting from others death?

In the US, shady brokers are making horrific deals. Read here.

They first find a person who has life insurance and is currently in need of money. Then they find investors who currently have some money to invest for a phenomenally high return with literally no risk. The investors agree to pay the insured person’s premiums plus some more cash up front, and the insured person agrees to make this investor his/her beneficiary. In simpler terms, when this insured person dies, the investor will claim the insurance amount! In the middle, this broker makes money too.

The pangs of old age are unimaginable. And if you don’t have any beneficiaries, are hard up for money, and without any other sources of income, this could be an option you’d consider, I guess. It does not seem morally correct, but then at that age, the position you’d be in, and relentless persuasiveness by brokers may just cause you to give in.

On the whole, I think the insurance industry should take such astonishing figures into account and introduce regulations/features that would dissuade policy-selling.

Paying premiums through cash values is an option, but it doesn’t provide money if you’re hard up and have current needs right?

Stretching my moral boundaries, a one-off deal between a seller and an investor (for mutual benefits) may just be acceptable.

However, commercializing this is not. Even what the Legacy Funding Group is doing (providing beneficiaries the net amount) is wrong! They benefit from the death of the insured (and by a fairly large margin!) – so who knows, they may just encourage it !?! No idea how far they could go too..

I may be a skeptic, but its ‘people’ and ‘money’.

Sleepy Pilots!

An Indian carrier managed the unthinkable – their pilots just.. fell asleep in the cockpit !! Read here.

Apparently, this was a flight flying from Dubai to Jaipur and then on to Mumbai. However, the strain led to the pilots taking a short nap after taking off from Jaipur. Eventually, they were well past Mumbai and nearly at Goa when emergency protocols helped wake them. Haah !!

The carrier is obviously trying to hush up the matter and not be a laughing stock in the Indian airline industry which has seen a phenomenal boom over the last few years…