United Nations

  •  Life insurance policies might normally be held to maturity, but the contract provides a liquidity option—owners can borrow against them.
  • They also have a cash value.
  • Demand deposits are normally held for a long time, but in a panic, they can be withdrawn overnight.

2009 0921 - United Nations - Report of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System - 140p

Universal Life Insurance:

  • a flexible premium life insurance policy under which the policyholder may change the death benefit from time to time (with satisfactory evidence of insurability for increases) and vary the premium payments.
  • Premiums (less expense charges) are credited to a policy account from which mortality charges are deducted and to which interest is credited at rates which may change from time to time. (p138/G30)

Adjustable Life Insurance: 

  • a type of insurance that allows the policyholder to change the plan of insurance, raise or lower the face amount of the policy, increase or decrease the premium, and lengthen or shorten the protection period. (p109/G1)

2002 - IAIS/UN - SUPERVISION OF INSURANCE OPERATIONS - [PDF-140p]

Nor are financial panics the only cause for concern. Financial markets have also long exhibited a vulnerability to manipulation, swindles, and fraud, including William Duer’s notorious attempt to corner the market for United States government bonds in 1791–92, the “wildcat” life insurance companies of the early nineteenth century (which took premiums from customers but disappeared
before paying any claims), the infamous pyramiding scheme of Charles Ponzi in 1920, and the highly suspect practices of New York’s National City Bank and its chairman, Charles Mitchell, in the run-up to the Great Crash of 1929. The apparent massive Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff that has recently unraveled in 2008 is only the latest in a long series of such financial scandals.

2009 - United Nations - Report of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System - (interim draft) - 607p