150 Types of Unusual Investments – The List

144. Viatical Settlements – investors purchase life insurance policies from policy owners; they are banking on the fact that the named insured will die and as the new beneficiary, the investor will collect the death benefit.

This type of investment is controversial as you are betting on someone else dying and the quicker the better for your ROI.

Viatical settlements are also pitched as an investment that is not correlated with the stock market or other investments since death is not something that works off an economic cycle.

A viatical settlement investor typically receives his initial investment back plus a profit as soon as the named insured dies.