Windsor is a fiduciary. The buyers are not.
Windsor Life Settlements represents the policyowner and owes the policyowner a fiduciary duty. Providers are the licensed companies that buy policies, and providers do not owe the seller a fiduciary duty. Their obligation runs to their own capital.
Windsor has represented policyowners in viatical settlements since 2012. Every offer received is reported back, including the ones worth turning down. When a policy will not sell, Windsor says so rather than stringing it out.
Most viatical calculators are life settlement calculators with a new heading.
Search for a viatical settlement calculator and the results mostly lead somewhere else. Some viatical pages link straight to a tool built for healthy seniors. Others define a viatical settlement as a type of life settlement and leave it at that.
The two are not the same transaction. A life settlement prices an older insured in ordinary health. A viatical settlement prices a shorter expected holding period, which is why the offers run higher, and it carries different federal tax treatment.
Several sites explain that correctly, then hand the reader a calculator that ignores it.
This one sits at its own address and prices the viatical case.
Why the form is short.
Three questions and a way to make contact. Nothing about the diagnosis.
The questions that decide the final number cannot be answered from a dropdown. Life expectancy comes from a licensed medical underwriter reading actual records, not from a menu of conditions. The waiting period question turns on whether the illness was diagnosed after the policy was issued, which is a sequence rather than a yes or no.
Anyone who has reached this page has a reason for being here. Typing the diagnosis into a web form does not improve the estimate.
What the estimate is.
A figure drawn from offers Windsor has secured since 2012, applied to the face amount of the policy. It is not an offer. No licensed buyer has seen the policy yet.
What Windsor looks at after the estimate.
The medical records.
Licensed underwriters read them and issue a life expectancy report. Offers track that report more closely than any other single factor.
The policy.
Type, issue date, premium schedule, and any loans or assignments already against it.
The carrier.
Financial strength changes what buyers will pay for the same death benefit.
The riders.
Many policies already carry an accelerated death benefit that pays part of the death benefit early. Sometimes that pays less than the market and is still the better answer, because it leaves coverage behind for a family.
Legal ownership.
A trust, a business, or an individual each sell differently, and the wrong signature stops a transaction cold.
State law.
Regulation, disclosure requirements, and waiting period exceptions are not uniform across the country. The viatical settlement regulations by state page covers the differences.
None of that costs anything to establish.
