Steering Your Financial Future: Demystifying Life Settlements with Christopher Conway

🎙️ Welcome to a revelatory episode of Pathways with Amber Stitt! 

👔 In today’s insightful conversation, Amber sits down with Chris Conway—a seasoned entrepreneur and expert in the life insurance and life settlements industry. 

🛥️ Starting with a colorful analogy of steering through the unpredictable waters of life, Chris walks us through his unconventional journey from rookie insurance salesperson to consultative advisor and specialist in life settlements.

🤿 Together, they dive deep into what life settlements are, dispelling myths, and exploring how this often-overlooked option can empower both consumers and financial advisors. 

🧰 Chris shares stories from his extensive career, explains why life insurance is best viewed as an asset, and discusses the importance of proactive, personalized planning—whether you’re an individual preparing for the future or an advisor looking to enrich your toolkit.

🛠️ You’ll learn how understanding life expectancy, the shift from ‘need’ to ‘want,’ and creative thinking about financial tools can open doors to greater freedom and peace of mind as we all navigate life’s ever-changing tides.

⛵ Whether you’re in the industry, planning for retirement, or just curious about new ways to optimize your financial journey, this episode is packed with practical wisdom and actionable insights. 

📽️ To watch this episode:  https://youtu.be/ibMkFbM_nas

🔗  To connect with Chris Conway:

📲 Learn more: https://iscservices.com

📲 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cconwaylifesettlementexpert

#pathwayswithamberstitt #iscservices #christopherconway #lifesettlements #amberstitt #lifeinsurance

📻 Thank you for tuning in to Pathways!

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📲 Be sure to visit Amber's website:

www.AmberStitt.com

And remember, let's take action today!!!

Transcript

Chris Conway [00:00:00]:
I like to describe it as steering a boat. We all drive, but if you've ever steered a boat, the ocean is working against you all the time. And so you can't just...it's not like...I'm not saying Tesla's technology works perfectly, but you can't set it and forget it.

Amber Stitt [00:00:14]:
Right.

Chris Conway [00:00:14]:
Or you're going to hit something.

Amber Stitt [00:00:16]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:00:16]:
And what you have to do is constantly course correct because of these forces that are moving you in that medium that you're moving through called life. And we're, again, we're just one mechanism for plotting that course.

Amber Stitt [00:00:31]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:00:31]:
And it may be a mechanism you use to change it.

Amber Stitt [00:00:34]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:00:34]:
But it doesn't have to be. It could just be to know where you are. And a lot of us, frankly, might need to know where we are from time to time.

Amber Stitt [00:00:42]:
Hello and welcome to Pathways. I am your host, Amber Stitt, and today we welcome Chris Conway to the show. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Conway [00:00:50]:
Thank you, Amber. Good morning.

Amber Stitt [00:00:51]:
Well, I'm so excited to have you here. I don't know a ton about life settlements, and we're going to dig into that. And I always like to ask you, or my guests, how they...their pathway into this life that they've led. And I know that you are an advocate for being an entrepreneur and helping others and their businesses, helping people understand an industry that might be a little confusing for some, or maybe for most. So can we start letting you talk a little bit about you and your pathway into this role that you've built for yourself?

Chris Conway [00:01:23]:
Sure. Like everybody, I have a story. It's not particularly exciting, but I first got involved in the life insurance business in the early 80s, and to be quite honest, I met a life insurance agent who we trained together, running and that kind of thing. And he eventually invited me to join him in his practice in South Florida. And I was young and clueless, educated, but not wise. Not that I am now. And he was a salesperson in a small agency at a time when universal life was still a relatively new product and there was a battle raging between whole life companies and universal life companies. So I was trained as a whole life agent, but I learned about universal life through him.

Chris Conway [00:02:17]:
I was a terrible salesperson. I wanted things to make sense. And, sure, I prospected aggressively. I did everything I was supposed to do, but I was not, frankly, a good closer. I never fit into a large institution. We used to interact with some of the companies and those kinds of things. And I moved from a sales role into more of a consultative role, working for small consultancies that were doing advanced insurance planning work. And one of the first concepts I was exposed to is kind of counterintuitive.

Chris Conway [00:02:49]:
We used home equity to fund universal life insurance policies where you could borrow money against your house at 6% and you were getting credited a lot more than that, 10%, 11%, 12% by some of the bigger UL companies. And that idea of thinking around the traditional did two things to me. One, it meant it was going to be really hard for me to work within a big company with a system and a manual as thick as a phone book and that kind of thing because frankly I asked too many questions. And the other thing it told me is that a lot of the concepts with which I had become familiar in my sales training that worked.

Amber Stitt [00:03:30]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:03:31]:
Were things that could be challenged not because they wouldn't work the way that they were originally presented, but because there might be other ways to, forgive the expression, wield the weapon.

Amber Stitt [00:03:42]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:03:43]:
So life insurance could be a tool for other things. And once I began to believe that that was possible, I started to look at everything a little bit differently. And that, right or wrong, that made me an entrepreneur by default because I couldn't not question kind of the status quo.

Amber Stitt [00:04:01]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:04:02]:
I then in that process, to be honest, we gave a seminar on that concept and I met a guy who asked me to have a cocktail after the seminar and he said, "Have you ever heard of a viatical settlement?" And I said, "No." And that began what's now a 33 year career in what became the life settlements market. So I kind of bumbled around, asked a lot of questions, met some interesting people and was attracted to the people who were thinking kind of from a different angle. And for whatever reason I was oriented to think the same way. And that led me to where I am today.

Amber Stitt [00:04:38]:
Okay, can we go back to you are saying you are training, you're working out together, you got a buddy. "And then my buddy. Here we go." So at what point did you get your insurance license?

Chris Conway [00:04:50]:
1983.

Amber Stitt [00:04:51]:
So you guys are friends and you just go, "I'm gonna go get that, I'm gonna pass that exam, get the license and then we'll give it a go." And so you enter into this sales world where a lot of advisors go. You almost get kind of thrown in, no experience. Go prospect. What do they call it, "The 100," that the bigger like Northwestern Mutuals, you gotta go hit up all your friends and family and it's like drinking from a fire hose and you don't even know if you like it or not. It's just like, go, go.

Chris Conway [00:05:18]:
Correct.

Amber Stitt [00:05:18]:
I feel like you are maybe potentially a bit of a fact finder, very inquisitive. So you're like, "I need to know how the cookie is made before I sell it." Is that that first kind of foundational? I mean, that makes sense. If you're in the business you are in now, you want to know the details behind the why.

Chris Conway [00:05:34]:
Correct. As a matter of fact, we often characterize ourselves. I have a partner in the consulting side of our business. We have a couple of small businesses in the life insurance services realm. And I characterize myself as a watchmaker, not a time teller. So we're very much oriented towards how the watch is built, making sure that it tells the right time, which is the end result. But we really need to know how we're getting there. And a lot of what we do actually correlates to that concept.

Chris Conway [00:06:02]:
So you're absolutely right.

Amber Stitt [00:06:04]:
I think you're helping, also, any listener that might be new to the industry. I think it's nice to let that new advisor in sales know that we've all kind of gone through that and it's helpful to either say, "Yep, this is my thing, or no, but I like financial services." But there's so many ways to be in this business. And so it's like, "Don't give up, don't be hard on yourself, but go try another way.' And then how long after did you get into advanced markets? Because that's a little comprehensive just for a newer person to go out and start consulting. That's pretty awesome.

Chris Conway [00:06:34]:
It is. But when you're with small companies, you can move around in bigger environments, unintentionally in some cases, without really knowing that that's what's happening. And one of the things that does that is an idea that would have a heck of a time getting through the channels at New York Life, for example, great company, but the bureaucracy through which you have to go. Whereas if you start small with a regional, or an IMO, or a BGA, a producer group, we used to have to have breakfast every day with a prospect. That was one of the things you did to prospect is meet somebody you know and get them to bring somebody you don't know and this kind of thing. But when you have an idea that leaps over some of those things, it's very good to know those things and have that experience. You can end up in boardrooms without any other way that that would have been possible.

Chris Conway [00:07:30]:
And sometimes the ideas aren't so amazing as they are outside the norm. They're a little bit different. For example, how to pay for insurance, was the concept that I mentioned, using home equity.

Amber Stitt [00:07:41]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:07:42]:
And funding universal life when the interest rate environment was very different than it is now.

Amber Stitt [00:07:47]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:07:48]:
So that's how that happens.

Amber Stitt [00:07:49]:
Well, and what I'm hearing you say is that often when you're independently thinking, you can customize your plans and you can then decide what's great for your client, or you can then help advisors that will help their client by coming in and doing some consulting. That's really what I have done over the last 15 years. And I grew up in the business never thinking I'd be in this business because, "Who would sell insurance? Oh my gosh, that's awful." But really it's this peace of mind providing ways for people to have that risk transferring and really just helping people take action is where it's become really important for me. And that's a whole other episode a few years back that I share about that. But really I like that we can customize and really be freely thinking and the whole life versus the permanent and all these things. There's been all the noise throughout all the years. But what's nice is that you can choose your method.

Amber Stitt [00:08:40]:
You just...everyone can understand money and how we can utilize some of these resources. And that really brings me to you today. So do you mind talking about just some of the myths that come with life settlements? Is that a good kind of kickoff point?

Chris Conway [00:08:53]:
Sure. I think the primary myth that we try to dispel and you know, you get in an elevator and somebody says, "What do you do for a living?" The first response is almost always, "Are you sure you want to know?" I made a lot of friends that way and I've actually hired people that way. But the biggest myth in life settlement market, or that affects the life settlement market, is that life insurance is a liability. It's actually an asset. And when you get people to realize that if they move it to the other side of their personal balance sheet, their perspective changes. And life settlement is a mechanism by which you can make that reality as concrete as it gets, cash on the table. But it is not how most people view the product, or view the utility of the product, or the purpose of the product. Everybody is trained to think in terms of need, not want, when it comes to that product.

Chris Conway [00:09:48]:
And when you change their thinking to want, their behaviors change. And unfortunately, it's not a widely known service. Life settlement is very much unknown. But that myth, it's a liability, is the biggest thing that we have to overcome. And it pervades the society for good reason. But that's the thing we fight against the most, is changing that perspective on that one idea.

Amber Stitt [00:10:12]:
You're listening to Pathways with Amber Stitt. For more episodes like this, plus so much more, check out the podcast page at: AmberStitt.com Let's take action together! Now let's get back to our episode. Well, I appreciate you talking about the "Need versus Want", because you talked about the timing of your license. And I have a father that's been in the business since his early 20s, my business partner since his early 20s. And we have this world of these financial tools, these software programs saying, "Plug in all this data and what do you need?" The needs analysis, right? When I meet with couples and I hear where they are getting their information, or individuals, we say, "Okay, what's kind of on your hit list? What do we need to cover here?" But then they're like, "Well, how do I know? How much do I need?" And I say, "Well, let's talk about what do you want? Literally, you drive off today, you go to Target, you never make it back. It's not college savings at that point, or whatever it could be. It could be all that way before."

Amber Stitt [00:11:11]:
And you know, a lot of times we'll hear, "Well, the prediction of the college education is this percentage more." I'm talking about the next 10 to 15 years if something happens like way before. And what do you want to have left behind just in case? And so I kind of challenge people and it can scare them. But we need to have some real talk here and really invest in our thoughts on building that out. And I know that that's where you're helpful. And so along with these myths, let's talk about just why it's misunderstood. Let's just go through 101. What is a life settlement? What can it provide for folks that are using the tools?

Chris Conway [00:11:46]:
Sure. So a life settlement is a life insurance policy that a consumer purchased for some purpose at some point in the past, and they've reached a point in the present such that they no longer want, or need it. And there are a variety of circumstances that can change the utility of a particular policy, or group of policies. When they reach that point, they typically have two options. They can surrender the policy to the carrier in exchange for the cash surrender value what the carrier will essentially give them for having been a customer for however long. Or, they can lapse the policy if there's no surrender value, stop paying premiums, have the coverage effectively evaporate. And the third option is they can explore selling it for more than the cash surrender value. And a life settlement is a regulated transaction through which a consumer sells an unwanted or unneeded policy to an investor for a discount to the death benefit.

Chris Conway [00:12:46]:
Less than the face amount, more than the cash surrender value, on average 6 times more than the cash surrender value as of the most recent data. It's that simple. It's still a policy, it's still life insurance. The investor takes over the premium payments and gets the death benefit. But the consumer, the seller, gets a lump sum of cash in the most typical transaction that they can do other things with while they're living, when they're ready, at their discretion.

Amber Stitt [00:13:13]:
Okay, so this is not for term insurance policies. This is for permanent insurance.

Chris Conway [00:13:18]:
Normally, if it's a term policy, the insured would have a very short life expectancy and we're in that business, so we can talk about that. Or the policy is convertible and may be converted at some point with the assistance of the seller, usually at sale, into some form of permanent insurance. And most policies in the life settlement market are universal life.

Amber Stitt [00:13:39]:
Okay, now why would an investor want to pick up this death benefit and pay somebody for it? Why?

Chris Conway [00:13:46]:
So the first primary reason that most investors invest is yield. The imputed value of a life settlement at purchase price X relative to the face amount, which is decreasing in value because of inflation over time. So the calculation determines a discount rate can be very attractive for investors. And particularly so, prior to our current interest rate environment changing. The other thing is that it's not correlated to the stock market, the debt markets, or anything else. So a lot of investors are seeking a portion of their portfolio...they're seeking asset classes that don't correlate to other asset classes. So overall there's a balance to what they're doing as an institution.

Amber Stitt [00:14:31]:
Okay, let's pause there. This might be a lot for people to kind of like...It takes a long time in the industry to pick up some of the terminology.

Chris Conway [00:14:39]:
Sure.

Amber Stitt [00:14:39]:
You talked about assets versus liability. This is the exact reason that this asset's important to an investor, correct?

Chris Conway [00:14:47]:
It is.

Amber Stitt [00:14:47]:
And they're trying to mix up their portfolio and have a balance. And this is a portion of that. So when people sometimes knock permanent insurance, "Oh, so expensive. Why would you do it?" All the things that we hear.

Chris Conway [00:14:59]:
Right.

Amber Stitt [00:15:00]:
Okay, well, is there some value? It's multi use, almost like you say a multifamily property. Sometimes you can think of the multi use here, the usage of having one of these. We can go on and on about that.

Chris Conway [00:15:11]:
Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things we deal with is the concept of leverage, borrowing. Most people think that's borrowing money. But in our world, life insurance is a lever that you can use to optimize other assets. But if you don't have it when you need to do that, then you don't have that leverage and the decisions you make about other things become more challenging. In the home equity market that I started in, I was on the insurance side, but it's very hard to eat bricks, mortar, wood, and steal. When your house is paid for, you have no income and you can't borrow. But life insurance can be a lever to leverage other assets such that if you liquidate them, you can still pay for them and so on and so forth.

Chris Conway [00:15:53]:
And life settlement proceeds are often used to do those kinds of things. And frankly, a lot of people keep some of their policies and sell others as a means of through their advisors, typically optimizing their financial plan.

Amber Stitt [00:16:07]:
Yeah, I work with a lot of physicians. They're 26, 27, 28. So for them to think at some point, "I'd have all these policies, no way." And I share my story, you know, in my 40s. Yeah, I've had a few and there's multiple things that have occurred for that reason. Okay, so let's switch gears and talk about the typical client that you would help. And I'm mainly looking at, I think it is the senior market and those are those people that are needing that. "Let's get that lump sum.

Amber Stitt [00:16:32]:
I need to do some things here." Can you tell us a story, or really just that common use that is part of that phone call. What are the needs there for people?

Chris Conway [00:16:40]:
Sure. So financial advisors often access life settlement brokers in the market, but they can do this themselves. The typical conversation is a client who's generally elderly, wealthy, and well advised. It's not that they have to have an advisor, but most do. They own life insurance and they are looking at their cash flow. And again, most people have more than one policy. And most people have purchased policies over the course of their life for various reasons. If they have a policy that they don't need anymore, they first look at surrender value.

Chris Conway [00:17:18]:
Typically they would call their insurance agent, if they have one, or their financial advisor, depending on how that person was trained and their perspective can be a very different conversation. Assuming that they're given the option to sell, what they're considering is, "If I sell this policy, what do I do with the premiums I'm not going to pay? What do I do with the lump sum I'm going to be paid? Do I need the life insurance coverage that I will be transferring to the investor? Do I need all of that coverage?" And if they don't and they enter into a transaction, they're often looking at funding needs to pay for health care at older ages where they spend most of their wealth in the last few years of their lives. Long-term care that they didn't purchase when they were given the opportunity repeatedly by advisors. And they now realize: 1) how expensive it is and 2) that they don't have the liquidity to fund it. So they have an objective that starts with I don't need this policy, or I don't want to pay the premiums anymore. And that often evolves into a number of positive outcomes that quite frankly, after the surprise that they can do this at all, tend to be very, very beneficial. I know people that have, for example, who are very old and at the end of their lives and they took their entire family on a cruise around the world with the money.

Chris Conway [00:18:42]:
But there are a lot of people that have very practical reasons that are driven by facts and circumstances. We will all face the rising cost of health care, the need for assistance with that, the expense that that involves. Maybe you want to pay off the house before you pass so that your spouse doesn't have to worry about that because it's an emotional concern for them. I mean, I could tell you all kinds of stories from the AIDS era on through. We put dollars in people's pockets that they didn't know they have. We call it the Van Gogh in the basement.

Amber Stitt [00:19:12]:
Sure.

Chris Conway [00:19:12]:
It's something they didn't know.

Amber Stitt [00:19:14]:
Now I think you say it's not just wealthy people though.

Chris Conway [00:19:17]:
Oh no. It's becoming increasingly more common and there are direct-to-consumer advertising programs out now where people with smaller policies who don't need the coverage anymore, or can't afford it, or they have other pressing financial needs can sell their policies. So it used to be that the average policy was quite large, several million dollars. Today that number continues to come down into the $250K, $500K face amount range, which sounds like a lot. When I started it was a lot of face. But today with the economy the way it is, a lot of people have that much coverage and more.

Amber Stitt [00:19:52]:
Yeah, oh yeah. Okay. So are you seeing people come in knowing that they have RMDs they're being forced to make, or to take. They're now being forced to take the distribution. So like, "Okay, I have to take this money, there's going to be some taxes owed." Is there kind of like that advisory role that you had mentioned? Do they need to be talking usually to an advisor, or tax advisor to say, once the retirement stream has to start coming in, how are we going to make payments for X, Y and Z coupled with long-term care needs? Is there kind of like this perfect storm of you might need some advice here to blend the plan out?

Chris Conway [00:20:26]:
The market is predominantly populated with people who are represented.

Amber Stitt [00:20:31]:
Okay.

Chris Conway [00:20:32]:
The biggest challenge for people who are not represented is that they had a representative and in many cases their representative is similar to them in age. And the representative retires. And it's the same in health care. A lot of us have doctors that are our age, but when we get to a certain point, I'm not a retiring kind of guy, but I know my doctor is going to hang it up and I'm going to end up with a much younger person that I don't know. And the same thing happens in the advisory community, guys and girls hanging up and the consumer is left with, "Where do I go?" It's not the kind of transaction that most people can handle without advice, to be honest. And they need to consider the context, not just that event, but how it fits into the other things that they're dealing with financially. So most of the people that we deal with are advisors representing consumers that are selling.

Amber Stitt [00:21:27]:
So it sounds like it's very important for any advisor to really have this in the tool belt as a resource, this information for their aging client, because all of us are going to hit that point where we're going to need some advice. So being cross-trained and that is helpful. So I know you do a lot of speaking and you were just in a global seminar earlier today before we met. Is that really where your passion project came from of speaking and really advocating is to help bring this information that's kind of pretty broad to advisors?

Chris Conway [00:21:57]:
Every chance we get, we speak. I'm not saying we're good at it, but there's no other way to leverage the amount of time that we all have, which is the same amount for all of us to get the word out. And in our life expectancy underwriting business, for example, longevity risk is something that is in a lot of places and we're all affected by it. But it's not an idea that you kick around at the pool. So when we get the chance to put something out there to start the conversation, it's not a simple conversation. But to start the conversation with something we have all dealt with with our family members, with our parents, and so on. As life evolves, we try to do that, but our community is somewhat small, so there are a lot more people to talk to than there are people like me to talk to them.

Amber Stitt [00:22:45]:
It's so important to just head into this and be proactive as any individual in their planning. But I think the typical kind of...there's like this shutdown, like the neuroscience behind it will say, like most people don't want to think bad thoughts, so they might just...what do they say, "Analysis paralysis." But if we can really talk and start that conversation, it's so important because ultimately we get to decide what we choose. And there's so many resources out there. So let's talk about just the problem though, with some of the limitations to the general information that's out there and why it's important for you to kind of pull that in. And I know you do that through your website and stuff, like through some of your consulting. So you talked about statistics and just some of the longevity stats.

Amber Stitt [00:23:23]:
Can you speak a little bit about why we need to know a little more than ever?

Chris Conway [00:23:27]:
Sure. So, first of all, there's a 40 some odd billion dollar industry being built around the idea of everybody living to 100. I'm not an economist, but if that were to happen, you can imagine the impact it would have globally on a whole lot of things that are interconnected and hypersensitive to lots of people being around longer than expected. And it generates a lot of economic interest because it's a concept everybody can get behind. Everybody wants to live longer. They also talk a lot about healthspan. What we know is that human beings wear out. The concept that, the nod and a wink, is we rust, we get spots.

Chris Conway [00:24:10]:
Things get a little creaky, they need some lubrication and so on.

Amber Stitt [00:24:14]:
I feel like the tin man over here.

Chris Conway [00:24:16]:
Exactly. The interesting thing is, is that most people as they get older are far more comfortable with their own mortality than the people advising them and the people around them.

Amber Stitt [00:24:28]:
Interesting.

Chris Conway [00:24:29]:
I talk to a lot of older people of all different walks of life, and I don't tiptoe around it anymore because I've learned that they don't tiptoe around it, we do. And they don't think it's funny, or cute, or anything. They understand it because they did it themselves. But, everybody knows what ultimately is in store for them in this life.

Amber Stitt [00:24:50]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:24:50]:
And what we find is that once you're comfortable with the concept that everybody generally has an innate sense of we're all getting older, we're all going to pass. Then you get into the real conversation, which is, how is that period of your life going to be, health span as opposed to lifespan, concepts like that. In our underwriting practice, we see a lot of people that make it well into their 90s and beat the averages. On the public side, people think, "Well, nobody can make it that long," because they don't know anybody in their lives that has. But frankly, the number of those people is going through the roof. And many of them are just as agile and mentally adept as anybody else you would meet on the street. They're living good health spans. And we think that those concepts are going to continue to kind of expand throughout society.

Chris Conway [00:25:43]:
And our job as underwriters is to evaluate the trajectory that a person is on and observe the change in that trajectory, for better, or worse. So, everybody's got an Uncle Joe, or an Aunt Jane that can eat a full plate of barbeque and have a couple of sips of whiskey on the side.

Amber Stitt [00:26:00]:
Maybe smoking cigarettes and having bacon.

Chris Conway [00:26:02]:
Exactly right.

Amber Stitt [00:26:03]:
95.

Chris Conway [00:26:05]:
And I'm thinking, "I'm not gonna make it." But they do. They do. And more and more of them do. And there are reasons for that that we don't understand yet. Some people just have...

Amber Stitt [00:26:15]:
She's happier!

Chris Conway [00:26:18]:
Frame of mind, social interaction. And quite frankly, the propensity to survive exists as a concept. And it's useful to know those things, particularly if you're advising people about how to plan for that period, because lots of people are going to get there.

Amber Stitt [00:26:34]:
So part of your practice is providing this research and this information to companies.

Chris Conway [00:26:40]:
Correct. We issue life expectancy assessments based on medical data on an individualized basis. And we're moving into the financial advisory world because almost on a daily basis it's being discussed. But most of the resources are what we call population based. But as an individual, I want to know where that little red icon of a human being is amongst the millions of everyone else. My trajectory, my lifespan has some unique characteristics. And we assess that on an individual basis for the life settlement market and advisors.

Amber Stitt [00:27:17]:
I see. So if I tell you I want to be a centurion and I have people in my family that's in their 90s, you might assess me a little bit differently. If I'm otherwise healthy, maybe I can do it?

Chris Conway [00:27:27]:
That makes a difference. The other thing is, is that you're young, so some of the technology that everybody talks about can't be applied to people in their 80s, but can be applied to somebody like you. I probably missed that boat, as well, to be honest. But these are the things that get discussed on the Today Show, or whatever, as well. "There's been this amazing advancement in research in this, or that." And the problem is, does it apply to me? And that's part of what we do is look at even if you're experiencing that treatment, is it having the effect that you want it to have and what other things might affect the ultimate outcome? As a financial advisor, how long the money's going to last is usually at least the topic on the agenda.

Amber Stitt [00:28:18]:
Sure.

Chris Conway [00:28:19]:
We just add additional context to that variable.

Amber Stitt [00:28:22]:
I love that because I feel that we never hear the stories about those that just had enough at retirement and just kept going and just had endless buckets of money. You got to think about if there's that factor of the length of time now. And I think that's where this is all starting to become more popular. If we're going to live longer, which bucket's going to run out? We need multiple buckets and advisors, especially having this information. The wisdom there is super powerful to build out beyond just the Monte Carlo analysis that I see a lot of people just using as, "Think the stress test will be okay." Well, we need to be more well-rounded, I suppose. So at this point I know that people can find you on your website. Is there anything else you want to share with the audience as more of a takeaway, something to be aware of and how you can help.

Chris Conway [00:29:09]:
I think the advisory community particularly needs to be aware of life settlements and add that, frankly knowledge, to their toolbox. Whether they do it, or not, they need to understand that it's out there and it provides a tremendous benefit to their clients. And a lot of clients do this with a separate advisor, a life settlement broker, or specialist. They don't have to and the advisor himself could access that expertise and learn from it in the same way that you probably learn the insurance business. I had a mentor basically, who got me into doing something that I didn't even understand why I was doing it, or what I was actually doing. He just said, "Do this and it will work."

Chris Conway [00:29:56]:
And so I did it. The other thing they need to understand is, again, it's a broken record, but if you start thinking about the personal balance sheet, that asset, asset, asset, and there are other things like that, but life insurance is, as they say, "Sold, not bought." And in my view, biased though it may be, I believe people should want it for reasons that include the traditional reasons, but also include these alternative approaches. The only other thing I would say is that it is possible to assess life expectancy to a degree. You've mentioned calculators and the concepts of modern portfolio theory and Monte Carlo and stochastic analysis. But life is not yet a perfectly solvable math problem.

Amber Stitt [00:30:45]:
Exactly.

Chris Conway [00:30:46]:
There are too many uncertain variables. And we are not claiming that we can hit it on the head again.

Amber Stitt [00:30:53]:
That's the point!

Chris Conway [00:30:54]:
Correct. We're describing a path, and the path can change. People reach points of diversion in their lives. And if we do this on an ongoing basis at certain inflection points, that it can be a very useful tool. I like to describe it as steering a boat. We all drive, but if you've ever steered a boat, the ocean is working against you all the time. And so you can't just...it's not like...

Chris Conway [00:31:20]:
I'm not saying Tesla's technology works perfectly, but you can't set it and forget it.

Amber Stitt [00:31:25]:
Right.

Chris Conway [00:31:25]:
Or you're gonna hit something.

Amber Stitt [00:31:26]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:31:27]:
And what you have to do is constantly course correct because of these forces that are moving you in that medium that you're moving through called life. And we're, again, we're just one mechanism for plotting that course.

Amber Stitt [00:31:41]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:31:41]:
And it may be a mechanism you use to change it.

Amber Stitt [00:31:44]:
Yeah.

Chris Conway [00:31:44]:
But it doesn't have to be. It could just be to know where you are. And a lot of us, frankly, might need to know where we are from time to time.

Amber Stitt [00:31:53]:
So, Chris, what I'm hearing you say is navigation. And I like to be in control. Maybe I'm a little too bossy, but in general, wouldn't it be awesome if we could be in control of our lives? And as the ocean is maybe a little more choppy, you can just pivot and course correct. And so that's really the point, is having people like us in the community to then share who's the expert in certain areas. You don't want the jack of all trades. You want this alliance that can give you that expert that you need. And I know you're one of them. So I really appreciate you being here today.

Chris Conway [00:32:26]:
I appreciate being here. It was a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

Amber Stitt [00:32:29]:
Awesome. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening and thanks again for being here.

Chris Conway [00:32:34]:
Thank you.

Amber Stitt [00:32:35]:
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Pathways. For more information about the podcast, books, articles, the blog, and so much more, please visit my website at: www.AmberStitt.com And remember, let's take action today! Thank you for listening!