Amrita Financial maintains a Google Business Profile carrying no ratings, listed in Oceanside, California.
The site carries a 2016 copyright notice and the listed location differs from the address on its California license record. Anyone considering Amrita should confirm the company is still actively trading before submitting policy information, and should check its license status with the California Department of Insurance.
The site also notes that its contents have not been approved for use with Texas policyowners by the Texas Department of Insurance.
Amrita is a fellow life settlement broker that decided the answer was software. Rather than a case manager working the phones, policyowners get an appraisal tool, a registration step, and up to three rounds of blind bidding they watch in a portal. The mechanism is sound. Buyers who cannot see each other bids price against their own models, and multiple rounds create genuine competition.
The site says two different things about what Amrita is, and both belong on this page. Its advisor materials state that Amrita operates as a fiduciary to the client and describe the team as life settlement brokers. A page written for providers states that Amrita is not a life settlement broker and not a fiduciary to the party selling the policy. The California license number sits in the footer of every page either way.
The reconciliation is probably structural. A firm can hold a license and employ licensed brokers while offering a self service route where the seller drives the transaction. But a policyowner reading only the marketing pages would not come away understanding which arrangement applies to them, and that distinction decides whether anyone in the transaction is legally obliged to act in their interest. It is a fair question to ask on the first call.
One practical caution before anything else. The site carries a 2016 copyright notice and the Google listing places the company in Oceanside, California rather than at the address on the license record. Confirm the firm is still actively trading, and check the license with the California Department of Insurance, before sending policy details anywhere.
Blind bidding and a brokered auction are often described as the same thing. They are close, and the difference shows up on the second round.
In a blind auction a seller receives numbers and decides alone. In a brokered process someone who knows the buyers receives the numbers first, knows which of them has room to move, and asks. A first offer is a starting position at almost every provider in this market. Whether it moves depends on whether anybody pushes it.
How life settlements began in 1911, what the AIDS crisis started, and the STOLI scandals the industry would rather forget.
Most people don’t qualify, despite what the commercials might suggest. Life settlements are typically for policyholders over age 75 or those with serious health conditions.
Life settlements are taxed more favorably than sellers fear. Part of the proceeds is usually a tax-free return of premiums.