The Peculiar History of Life Insurance

collectorsweekly.com

22 points·benbreen··5 comments

This sounds more convincing in terms of the history of life insurance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_insurance#Life_insu...

Maybe the article means to talk about the history of life insurance in the USA.

for those who wish to know...

Life Assurance (as opposed to insurance) is an excellent investment vehicle.. and often provides a tax free investment after a specified period, providing life cover up until it is cashed in.

http://taxplanet.com/magazine/other-topics/107-miscellaneous...

"Life Assurance" isn't a phrase commonly used in the United States. It's just called Life Insurance. And, as long as the organization backing it doesn't go under (counterparty risk), and you can live with being locked in for a period of time (there are usually pretty significant penalties for early withdrawal) it certainly offers a higher yield than most savings accounts you can get these days.

The proper comparison is stock investments, not savings accounts.

Not sure how life assurance/insurance works in the United States, but in Singapore, the principal is 100% guaranteed by the SDIC (Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation) - so, kind of a hybrid between Savings (Guaranteed by Government), and Stock (ROI linked to underlying equities.)

The major difference is significant penalties for early withdrawal.

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