GWG Holdings, Inc. - Annual Report: 2016 (Form 10-K)

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, DC 20549

FORM 10-K

☒   ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016

or

☐    TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1934

For the transition period from ________ to ________

Commission File Number: 001-36615

GWG HOLDINGS, INC.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

220 South Sixth Street, Suite 1200

Minneapolis, MN 55402

(Address of principal executive offices, including zip code) 

(612) 746-1944

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Common Stock

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act

None

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☐ No ☒

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act. Yes ☐ No ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☒  No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files). Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of the registrant's knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, or a smaller reporting company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer” and “smaller reporting company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). ☐ Yes ☒ No

As of March 15, 2017, GWG Holdings, Inc. had 5,779,745 shares of common stock outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE:

Portions of the definitive Proxy Statement for our 2017 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, to be filed within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Form 10-K. 

GWG HOLDINGS, INC.

Index to Form 10-K

for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2016

PART I

ITEM 1. BUSINESS.

Overview

GWG Holdings, Inc. is a financial services company committed to finding new ways of disrupting and transforming the life insurance and related industries through innovative products and services, business processes, financing strategies, and advanced epigenetic technology. Historically, we have focused on creating opportunities for consumers to obtain significantly more value for their life insurance policies as compared to the traditional options offered by the insurance industry. As part of our business, we create opportunities for investors to receive income and capital appreciation from our various activities.

The life insurance industry provides us with the opportunity to earn non-correlated yield by purchasing life insurance policies in the secondary market at a discount to the face value of the policy benefit. We pay the premiums of the policies that we purchase and collect the policy benefits upon maturity. This practice is disruptive to the life insurance industry since insurance carriers rely on consumer lapse and surrender behavior resulting in the forfeiture of policy benefits. As of December 31, 2016, we had purchased approximately $2.3 billion in face value of policy benefits from consumers for over $398 million, as compared to the $29 million in surrender value offered by insurance carriers on those same policies. As such, we provide unique and valuable services that help meet the financial need of life-insurance-owning consumers 65 years or older.

By purchasing life insurance policies at a discount to the face value of the policy benefit, we have the opportunity to generate attractive investment returns from assets not correlated to traditional financial markets. The potential yield generated from a portfolio of life insurance assets equals the difference between the (i) purchase price of the life insurance assets, plus the premiums and financing costs to maintain those assets; and (ii) the face value of the policy benefits received. As of December 31, 2016, our total investment in our portfolio of life insurance assets, including the purchase price, attendant premiums and financing costs was $494.9 million, and the total face value of our life insurance policy benefits was $1.36 billion.

We seek to build a profitable and large portfolio of life insurance assets that is well diversified in terms of insurance companies and insureds. We believe that diversification is a key factor and risk mitigation strategy to provide consistent cash flows and reliable investment returns. Accordingly, we seek to grow our portfolio and achieve diversification through a variety of financings and securities products offered to investors. We have built a robust operational platform to work with financial advisors and insurance professionals to assist consumers and to access the valuable products and services that we offer.

A critical factor for our overall success is our ability to accurately estimate human life expectancy. Our search for increased precision in estimating human life expectancy led us to a mortality predictive technology developed by Dr. Steve Horvath, a Professor of Human Genetics and Biostatistics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). We recently exercised an exclusive option to license, for use in the life insurance industry, Dr. Horvath’s “DNA Methylation Based Predictor of Mortality” technology or “M-Panel” technology. We believe M-Panel technology could improve our ability to more precisely predict life expectancy and, in turn, generate more reliable investment returns from our portfolio of the life insurance assets. We are currently in the process of negotiating a license agreement and assessing the intellectual property protection we may receive as a result of such a license.

We believe that M-Panel and related epigenetic technology could revolutionize the life insurance industry’s ability to underwrite insurance risk to more accurately predict human life expectancy. The ability to create more precise, non-invasive underwriting methods that can be delivered in a timely, cost-effective basis could be a significant innovation for the life insurance, long-term care, and annuity industries. Accordingly, we intend to pursue additional lines of business in the life insurance industry that commercialize and capitalize on the use of M-Panel technology. We believe this presents us with significant growth opportunities in what is referred to as the “insurtech” marketplace, where new technologies are disrupting and transforming the historical methods and models of the insurance industry.

To grow our portfolio and achieve the diversification we seek, as well as to pursue additional opportunities in the life insurance and related industries through the use of technology, we offer investors the opportunity to potentially receive income and capital appreciation through a variety of financings and securities offerings.

We are dedicated to finding new ways of disrupting and transforming the life insurance industry, both as it relates to our historical secondary life insurance business and now with the application of advanced epigenetic technology. Today, we provide consumers additional value for their life insurance policies by disrupting the status quo of high policy lapse rates and low surrender values that life insurance carriers have enjoyed for years. In the future, we intend to disrupt the industry further by providing consumers with additional innovative products and services that benefit from the use of advanced epigenetic technologies, such as M-Panel technology we are seeking to license. We believe this advanced epigenetic technology will permit us to reimagine the way in which risk is assessed, selected and priced in the life insurance industry, and possibly also the long-term care and annuity industries.

Our business was originally organized in February 2006. We added our current parent holding company, GWG Holdings Inc., in March 2008, and in September 2014 we consummated an initial public offering of our common stock on The NASDAQ Capital Market, where our stock trades under the ticker symbol “GWGH.”

GWG Holdings, Inc. (“GWG Holdings”) conducts its life insurance related business through a wholly owned subsidiary, GWG Life, LLC (“GWG Life”), and GWG Life’s wholly owned subsidiaries, GWG Life Trust, GWG DLP Funding III, LLC, and GWG DLP Funding IV, LLC. All of these entities are legally organized in Delaware, other than GWG Life Trust, which is governed by the laws of the State of Utah. Actüa Life & Annuity Ltd. is a new wholly owned subsidiary of GWG Holdings formed to engage in the various life insurance related businesses and activities. Unless the context otherwise requires or we specifically so indicate, all references in this prospectus to “we,” “us,” “our,” “our Company,” “GWG,” or the “Company” refer to these entities collectively. Our headquarters are based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In February 2016, we launched a new operating division in the merchant cash industry through a subsidiary entity, GWG MCA Capital, Inc. (“GWG MCA”). GWG MCA provides secured loans to merchant cash advance funders, and also provides merchant cash advances directly to small businesses across the United States. To begin this operating division, we acquired a $4.3 million portfolio of loans and advances from a subsidiary of Walker Preston Capital. GWG MCA is serviced by Saratov Capital, LLC.  

Markets

Consumers Owning Life Insurance and the Life Insurance Secondary Market

The market for life insurance is large. According to the American Council of Life Insurers Fact Book 2016 (ACLI), individual consumers owned over $10.3 trillion in face value of life insurance policy benefits in the United States in 2015. In that same year, the ACLI reports individual consumers purchased an aggregate of $1.6 trillion of new life insurance policy benefits. This figure includes all types of policies, including term insurance and permanent insurance known as whole life and universal life.

The secondary market for life insurance exists as a result of consumer lapse behaviors and inadequate surrender values offered to consumers by the insurance carriers. The ACLI reports that the lapse and surrender rate for individual life insurance policies is 5.4%, amounting to over $638.5 billion in face value of policy benefits lapsed and surrendered in 2015 alone. According to testimony by Gottlieb & Smetters, it is estimated that nearly 88% of all universal life insurance policies sold in the United States do not result in the payment of a benefit claim.

The life insurance secondary market is geared towards consumers, 65 years and older, who own life insurance and are addressing their retirement financial needs. These consumers represent the fastest growing demographic segment in the United States according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And as these consumers age, they and their families will be faced with a variety of financial needs that can benefit from the value-added products and services we offer. Our life insurance secondary market products and services address the convergence of three major trends: under-saving for retirement, longer life expectancies, and high and rising medical expenses. Our approach to the life insurance secondary market allows consumers to more efficiently access an illiquid asset to offset these costs.

Research by Conning Research & Consulting (Conning) reports that the annual net market potential for life insurance policy benefits sold in the secondary market exceeds $141 billion face value of policy benefits in 2016. Of that market potential, Conning estimates that investors purchased approximately $1.7 billion in face value of life insurance benefits in 2015, indicating that the market is dramatically underserved. And with an aging demographic in the United States, Conning expects the net market potential to grow to an annual $170 billion in face value of life insurance benefits by 2025. We share the belief that the life insurance secondary market represents both a dramatically underserved market and a significant long-term growth opportunity. We further believe that GWG is well positioned to address the market need.

Technology and the Life Insurance Industry

The opportunity to apply technology to transform the life insurance industry is significant. According to industry consultants at KPMG, Accenture, and Ernst & Young, there is a major movement afoot to transform the insurance industry through the use and application of advanced technologies. This movement, commonly referred to as “insurtech,” suggests a new era of disruptive entrants into the traditional insurance marketplace that have the potential to upend the insurance industry’s historical approach to assessing and selecting acceptable risks.

We intend to participate in the life insurance industry’s insurtech movement, initially through the advanced epigenetic technology developed by Dr. Steve Horvath. We began working with Dr. Horvath in 2015 after he reported that human cells have an internal “biological age” and “biological clock” at the DNA molecular level that is indicative of the aging process. The study of chemical modifications of methylation levels to the DNA molecule that reveal aging, and upon which the M-Panel technology is based, is part of the epigenetics field. Epigenetics is the study of how the DNA molecule’s instructions are translated into the production of proteins that make us who we are. Dr. Horvath’s epigenetic research has focused on methylation levels on our DNA in order to study the determinants of aging and mortality. For example, epigenetic methylation levels may be indicative of an individual’s exposure to smoking, cancer, cardiovascular, or other diseases.

In 2016, Dr. Horvath reported a discovery upon the completion of a statistical meta-analysis of over 13,000 individual DNA samples that was reported in the September 2016 issue of Aging. His research identified specific sets of DNA methylation-based bio-markers that was predictive of individual risk of all-cause mortality. We believe the implications of this discovery are simple and profound: individual lifespans can now be estimated with significantly greater precision across large groups of people. We are currently working to translate this technology into an actuarial underwriting methodology that we believe could prove revolutionary to traditional underwriting practices of the life insurance industry. 

Investors Seeking Yield from Alternative Assets

Since the credit crisis of 2008, the flow of capital to a variety of alternative asset classes has undergone a structural shift. Alternative assets, broadly defined, are any non-traditional asset with potential economic value that would not be found in a standard investment portfolio. An asset is generally considered “alternative” if it has some or all of the following characteristics: a limited investment history, not commonly found in portfolios, an illiquid market, different performance characteristics, and requires specialized skill to originate and service the asset. Definitions of traditional assets today extend well beyond stocks and bonds, and can include a variety of assets which may have been better classified as “alternative” a decade ago, i.e., real estate, commodities or natural resources. Thus, what is an alternative asset today may largely be considered tomorrow’s mainstream investment asset.

Once dominated by banks, alternative asset markets are in many cases no longer viable for banks to finance due to vast new regulation effected since the crisis, regulation that has in effect reshaped the way in which banks participate in many parts of the economy. At the same time, an increasing number of investors are now turning to alternative asset classes as a means to diversify their investment portfolio and manage risk and volatility, and to obtain greater returns in the low interest rate environment that has persisted since 2008. According to research published by Goldman Sachs, retail investors are expected to shift a significant allocation of their investments towards alternative assess from a current average of 4% to the 20% allocation favored by institutional investors over the next five to ten years (see Goldman Sachs, Retail Liquid Alternatives: The Next Frontier (2013)).

The trend of investors seeking access and exposure to alternative investment products is expected to continue as traditional bank sources of capital for these assets continues to retreat and alternative investment product offering innovations occur within the regulated securities markets. Researchers at McKinsey report that U.S. individual investors are expected to be a primary driver of growth in alternative asset investments. McKinsey reports that high net-worth individuals and the mass affluent are increasingly looking to hedge downside risk, protect principal, manage volatility, and generate income– the same reason institutional investors have favored larger allocations to alternative asset investment classes.

Our Business Model

Our business model is to earn a net profit between the yield generated by the assets we own and the costs we incur to originate and finance those assets. We believe that we are uniquely positioned to acquire life insurance assets in the secondary market directly from consumers needing our services, and to finance our portfolio’s growth by providing investors with the opportunity to participate in the yield we generate from those assets. In addition, upon our implementation of M-Panel or other similar technology, we believe that we will be uniquely positioned to create even more opportunities for capital appreciation by obtaining a competitive edge in our current market space, integrating our technologies in other insurance-related industries, and continuing to bring disruptive and innovative products and services to those industries.

To participate and compete in, and expand, our markets, we spend significant resources: (i) recruiting and developing a professional management team; (ii) establishing strategic relationships for delivering the services we provide; (iii) creating opportunities for investors to participate in the yield and capital appreciation generated by the alternative life insurance assets and technology we own; (iv) creating innovative growth opportunities to participate in the life insurance industry through the use of technology; and (v) developing a robust operational platform and systems for originating life insurance policies and other alternative assets.

Originating Life Insurance Assets

We generally purchase life insurance assets in the secondary market directly from policy owners who purchased their life insurance in the primary market. Historically, we have purchased these life insurance policies through a network of specialized brokers who assist consumers and financial professionals in accessing the secondary market. We maintain membership affiliations and representation within key industry groups, such as the Life Insurance Settlement Association. We typically attend and sponsor trade events where we maintain contacts and visibility among professionals who submit life insurance policies for our potential purchase.

A key strategic initiative of ours has been to expand our origination capabilities by marketing our products and services directly to consumers through financial professionals. Most recently, we focused these efforts towards financial professionals, namely financial advisors and life insurance agents, through our “Appointed Agent Program.” Our Appointed Agent Program is designed to empower financial professionals to bring the life insurance secondary market’s value proposition to their respective markets. Our Appointed Agent Program emphasizes education, training, regulatory compliance, and marketing support. We have built an extensive team capable of marketing our products and services directly to life insurance professionals. We expect to continue allocating considerable resources towards the development and support of our direct origination team. We believe these resources will be of particular value as we seek to expand our business into other, more conventional, insurance-related industries. 

Underwriting and Purchasing Life Insurance Assets

We focus on investing in high quality life insurance assets through our origination practices and underwriting procedures. These practices and procedures strive to meet guidelines and methodologies published by rating agency A.M. Best. At the same time, we seek innovative value-added tools, services, and methodologies to improve both the accuracy and efficiency with which we acquire life insurance assets.

Our secondary market underwriting procedures consist of a careful review and analysis of available materials and information related to a life insurance policy and the insured. The goal of our underwriting procedures is to make an informed purchasing decision. We typically purchase life insurance policies from insureds who are 65 years or older and whose life expectancies are less than 120 months (ten years). The life expectancies we use are estimates, stated in months, which indicate the 50% probability of an individual’s mortality (meaning actuarial analysis predicts half of the individuals with similar age, sex, and medical conditions will experience mortality before that number of months, and half will experience mortality after that number of months). Life expectancies are based on actuarial tables that predict statistical probability of individual mortality.

We obtain life expectancies from independent third-party medical-actuarial underwriting firms, unless the life insurance policy benefit has a face value of $1,000,000 or less (which we generally refer to as a “small face policy”). When we obtain life expectancies from independent third-party medical-actuarial firms, we receive a medical underwriter’s report summarizing the health of the insured based on a review of the insured’s historical medical records. For all life insurance policies we purchase, other than small face policies, we average two life expectancies from two independent medical-actuarial underwriting firms to form the life expectancy we use to price and value our life insurance assets. In some cases, we may obtain more than two life expectancy estimates. In those cases, we average the two life expectancy estimates that we believe are the most reliable of those we have received, based on our own analyses and conclusions. In this regard, the two life expectancy estimates we ultimately choose to average may not always be the most conservative. For small face policies, we use modified procedures to estimate a life expectancy that may, or may not, use life expectancies from independent third-party medical-actuarial underwriting firms. As a result, our practices and procedures for small face policies may not meet the guidelines and methodologies published by the rating agency A.M. Best. If in the future we believe our business model will benefit from changes in our underwriting process and if such revisions are permitted under our borrowing covenants, we may change our underwriting processes and policies.

Our success with our Appointed Agent Program, and in designing and implementing small face policy underwriting procedures, has presented us with the opportunity to purchase a greater number of small face life insurance policies. We believe this opportunity is meaningful since the majority of life insurance policies outstanding are small face policies, and policy diversification is critical in obtaining normalized actuarial performance. Historically, however, small face policies have not been available to purchasers of life insurance policies because secondary market industry participants have significantly relied on life insurance brokers who are paid a commission determined as a percentage of the face value benefit of the purchased policy, to present purchase opportunities. Not surprisingly, because larger commissions are associated with larger face value life insurance policies, brokers have focused on larger policies and the industry has developed origination practices and underwriting procedures to accommodate such practices. As a result, the industry’s traditional approaches to underwriting and purchasing life insurance assets are ill suited for small face policies. For example, procuring complete medical records, two separate life expectancy reports, and engaging in related activities, can be time consuming and expensive, and these same costs cannot be justified when purchasing smaller life insurance assets. In sum, our method is focused on obtaining enough medical information to generate reliable life expectancy estimates, and thereby make informed purchase decisions. Our streamlined procedures have made it possible to complete a preliminary underwriting in a number of days (as opposed to weeks), and complete the entire purchasing process in a number of weeks (as opposed to months).

We expect to further refine our underwriting processes for large- and small-face policies over time and, to the extent possible, use new technologies to enhance this process and our overall business. In 2015 we began an initiative to re-examine the way in which we approached underwriting. Our initiative included a review of new advanced medical technologies capable of predicting aging and related mortality more accurately than traditional methods. One of these technologies uses new developments in the examination of epigenetic biomarkers, and was pioneered by Dr. Steve Horvath, Professor of Human Genetics and Biostatistics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Horvath is a recognized expert on aging who has focused his research on the root causes of aging encoded in the chemical modifications of the DNA molecule.

Value Proposition – Life Insurance as an Alternative Asset

We realize profits from the life insurance assets we own by earning a spread between the investment cost of our life insurance assets and the face value of the policy benefits we receive. Accordingly, if we purchase life insurance assets in the secondary market, and make all the attendant premium payments to maintain those assets in order to receive the policy benefits, the most significant risk factors (among others that we discuss in the “Risk Factors” section of this report) in the performance of those assets are: (i) the predictability of mortality, or longevity risk; and (ii) the creditworthiness of the issuing life insurance company, or credit risk. We believe the value proposition of our investments in the alternative asset of life insurance is our ability to obtain superior risk-adjusted returns.

Longevity Risk. We believe actuarial mortality is the single largest variable affecting the returns on our investments in life insurance assets and impacting our life insurance portfolio’s performance over time. Accurately predicting an individual’s mortality date is impossible, and the best an actuary can do is provide a set of probabilities of survival over time. Nevertheless, predicting mortality among a group of similarly situated individuals is less difficult—in fact, the larger the group, the more accurate actuarial predictions tend to become. The statistical mathematical concept stating that the results of random events tend to become very predictable as the number of events becomes large is the “Central Limit Theorem” (or more commonly known as the “Law of Large Numbers”). “Mean regression” is another statistical mathematical concept used to describe that, on average, observations (in this case, the actual mortality of insureds) tend to cluster around the mean observation (i.e., our estimate of mortality of insureds as described further under “Value Proposition” below). These statistical mathematical concepts are the basis for many business models, ranging from insurance to the lottery. Insurance carriers, for example, can be very certain of the number of insurance claims they can expect when they have spread their risk over a large book of diversified policies. In this way, insurance carriers can price a large number of insurance policies of any type to collect premiums slightly above the level of expected claims, and thereby expect to earn a surplus or profit. Similarly, a lottery can depend on an expected amount of earnings equal to the small advantage built into the odds of the games.

The implications for our business model are two-fold: first, as we accumulate larger numbers of life insurance policies, we should expect our results to increasingly correlate with our expectations; second, over the long run, we should expect that the actual cash flows will converge with the forecasted cash flows from our portfolio of life insurance assets, and the actual return on our portfolio of life insurance assets will converge with our expected return. Although medical advances and life expectancy changes may significantly impact the longevity risk we face and our understanding of that risk, these concepts nevertheless serve as guiding principles as we seek to build, manage, and forecast the performance of our portfolio of life insurance assets.

These expectations are affirmed in research published by A.M. Best and others, illustrating that as the number of insured lives increase within a portfolio of life insurance policies, there is a corresponding decrease in the standard deviation of the mortality events within the portfolio—i.e., longevity risk decreases as the number of insureds increases. Standard & Poor’s indicates that 1,000 insured lives are required to reach statistical “significance” (where the relationship, in this context, between mortality projections and actual mortality events is not random). A.M. Best concludes that a portfolio of at least 300 insured lives is statistically significant. Our current portfolio covers 622 insured lives and we believe that both the predictability and actual performance will continue to improve with additional size and diversification. Accordingly, we continue to seek to grow the size and diversification of the portfolio in order to mitigate risk and improve our profitability.

Credit Risk. We rely on the payment of policy benefit claims by life insurance companies as our most significant source of revenue collection. The life insurance assets we own represent obligations of third-party life insurance companies to pay the benefit amount under the relevant policy upon the mortality of the insured. As a result, we manage this credit risk exposure by generally purchasing policies issued by insurance companies with investment-grade ratings from Standard & Poor’s, and diversifying our portfolio among a number of insurance companies.

Approximately 96.3% of life insurance assets in our portfolio were issued by insurance companies with investment-grade credit ratings from Standard & Poor’s, as of December 31, 2016. Our largest life insurance company credit exposures and the Standard & Poor’s credit rating of their respective financial strength and claims-paying ability is set forth below:

The yield to maturity on bonds issued by life insurance carriers reflects, among other things, the credit risk (risk of default) of such insurance carrier. We follow the yields on certain publicly traded life insurance company bonds since this information is part of the data we consider when valuing our portfolio of life insurance policies for our financial statements.  

The table above indicates the current yields to maturity (YTM) for the senior bonds of selected life insurance carriers with durations, on average, that are similar to our life insurance portfolio. The average yield to maturity of these bonds was 2.58%, which we believe reflects, in part, the financial market’s judgment that credit risk is low with regard to these carriers’ financial obligations. It should be noted that the obligations of life insurance carriers to pay life insurance policy benefits ranks senior to all of their other financial obligations, such as the bonds they issue. This “super senior” priority is not reflected in the yield to maturity in the table and, if considered, would result in a lower yield to maturity all else being equal. As such, as long as the respective premium payments have been made, it is highly likely that the owner of the insurance policy will collect the insurance policy benefit upon the mortality of the insured.

Value Proposition. We define the value proposition presented by our portfolio of life insurance assets as our ability to earn superior risk-adjusted returns. At any time, we calculate our returns from our life insurance assets based upon (i) our historical results; and (ii) the future cash flows we expect to realize from our statistical forecasts. To forecast our expected future cash flows, we use the probabilistic method of analysis. The actuarial software we use to produce our expected future cash flows and conduct our probabilistic analysis was developed by the actuarial firm Milliman and is now owned by Modeling Actuarial Pricing Systems, Inc. (“MAPS”). The expected internal rate of return of our portfolio is based upon future cash flow forecasts derived from a probabilistic analysis of our policy benefits received in relation to our investment cost basis. As of December 31, 2016, the expected internal rate of return on our portfolio of life insurance assets was 11.34% based on our portfolio benefits of $1.362 billion and our investment cost basis of $494.9 million (including purchase price, premiums paid, and financing costs incurred to date).

We seek to further enhance our understanding of our expected future cash flow forecast by applying a stochastic analysis, sometimes referred to as a “Monte Carlo simulation,” to provide us with a greater understanding of the variability of our future cash flow projections. The stochastic analysis we perform is built within the MAPS actuarial software and provides internal rate of return calculations for different statistical confidence intervals. The results of our stochastic analysis, in which we run 10,000 random mortality scenarios, demonstrates that the scenario ranking at the 50th percentile of all 10,000 results generates an internal rate of return of 11.29%, which is near to our expected internal rate of return of 11.34%. The stochastic analysis results also reveal that our portfolio is expected to generate an internal rate of return of 10.75% or better in 75% of all generated scenarios; and an internal rate of return of 10.30% or better in 90% of all generated scenarios. As the portfolio continues to grow, all else equal, the percentage of observations that result in an internal rate of return at or very near 11.29% (currently our median, or 50th percentile, internal rate of return expectation) is expected to increase, thereby lowering future cash flow volatility and potentially justifying our use of lower discount rates to value our portfolio.

In sum, we believe our statistical analyses show that, if we can continue to grow and maintain our investments in life insurance assets, then, in the absence of significant negative events affecting our most significant risks, including but not limited to longevity and credit risk, and interest rate and financing risk, those investments will provide superior risk-adjusted returns for our company and provide us with the means to generate attractive returns for our investors.

Portfolio Information

Our portfolio of life insurance policies, owned by our subsidiaries as of December 31, 2016, is summarized below:

Our portfolio of life insurance policies, owned by our subsidiaries as of December 31, 2016, organized by the insured’s current age and the associated policy benefits, is summarized below:

Distribution of Policy Benefits by Current Age of Insured 

Our portfolio of life insurance policies, owned by our subsidiaries as of December 31, 2016, organized by the insured’s current age and number of policies owned, is summarized below:

Distribution of Policies by Current Age of Insured

Our portfolio of life insurance policies, owned by our subsidiaries as of December 31, 2016, organized by the insured’s estimated life expectancy estimates and associated policy benefits, is summarized below:

Distribution of Policies by Current Life Expectancies of Insured

We track concentrations of pre-existing medical conditions among insured individuals within our portfolio based on information contained in life expectancy reports. We track these medical conditions within the following ten primary disease categories: (1) cancer, (2) cardiovascular, (3) cerebrovascular, (4) dementia, (5) diabetes, (6) multiple, (7) neurological disorders, (8) no disease, (9) other, and (10) respiratory diseases. Our primary disease categories are summary generalizations based on the ICD-9 codes we track on each insured individuals within our portfolio. ICD-9 codes, published by the World Health Organization, are used worldwide for medical diagnoses and treatment systems, as well as morbidity and mortality statistics. Currently, the only primary disease category within our portfolio that represents a concentration of over 10% is cardiovascular, which constitutes 20.3% of the face amount of insured benefits of our portfolio as at December 31, 2016.

The complete detail of our portfolio of life insurance policies, owned by our subsidiaries as of December 31, 2016, organized by the current age of the insured and the associated policy benefits, sex, estimated life expectancy, issuing insurance carrier, and the credit rating of the issuing insurance carrier, is set forth below.

Life Insurance Portfolio Detail

(as of December 31, 2016)