Industry group the Life Insurance Settlement Association (LISA) has released its 2025 annual market data, showing that consumers who sold their life insurance policies through a LISA member received nearly nine times their cash surrender value – almost 900% more than they would have received by surrendering the policy to their insurance company.
In practical terms, the average policyholder who surrendered a policy received $24,360, compared to the average payout of $212,066 for consumers who sold their policies on the secondary market through a life settlement.
The findings come as the average cash surrender value offered by insurers declined 27% year-over-year, falling from $33,493 in 2024 to just $24,360 in 2025.
“The 2025 data tells a clear story: the life settlement market is delivering real, measurable value for consumers at a time when insurance companies are offering less and less,” said Bryan Nicholson, Executive Director of LISA.
“As cash surrender values decline, consumers deserve to understand all of the options available to them before making decisions about a valuable and too often overlooked financial asset.”
The 2025 release marks five years of LISA’s annual data collection effort. From 2021 through 2025, LISA members paid consumers $3.6bn for policies they no longer needed, approximately $3bn more than those same policyholders would have received by surrendering their coverage to insurers.
Nearly 15,000 policies were settled over that period.
“As retirement costs rise and financial priorities evolve, more consumers are looking closely at the assets they already own and evaluating how those assets fit into their broader financial picture,” said Rob Haynie, Chair of LISA.
“For many policyholders, understanding that a secondary market exists for life insurance policies can open the door to options they may not have realized were available.”
