The European Life Settlement Association has launched a retail market consultation into the practices and issues surrounding life settlements.
The consultation will help inform the content relating to retail investors in Elsa’s impending code of practice for the life settlement industry, which will be published later this summer.
While the code of practice will cover all areas of life settlement investing – across both the institutional and retail markets – Elsa has decided to engage specifically with the IFA community following the questions raised by the Financial Services Authority about the asset class earlier this year.
The Association of Independent Financial Advisers has agreed to carry the IFA life settlement consultation to its members. The questionnaire will also be made available through the distribution channels of Elsa’s members, the media and via other interested parties. A face-to-face debrief session with selected Aifa members will conclude the retail consultation process.
Patrick McAdams, investment director at SL Investment Management and Elsa chairman, says: “We recognise that a lot of questions have been posed at the retail market in particular when discussing this asset class. In the wake of continued uncertainty around Keydata and Lifemark, intermediaries are rightly looking much more closely at product structures and wishing for greater transparency than ever.
“We intend to use this IFA consultation as a valuable feedback mechanism to ensure that we cover in our comprehensive code all the critical issues for this market. Separately, we have given the FSA sight of a draft of the code, ahead of the response from IFAs, to ensure it is moving in the right direction and goes far beyond current conduct of business rules in the UK.”
