Coventry sees growing life settlement demand, promotes Kuchera

Coventry, a leading player in the market for life settlement investments, sees positive market momentum for this segment of insurance-linked investing and has made a key promotion to support expected growth.

Coventry has completed more than $40 billion in longevity-linked transactions since its founding and is a specialists in enabling a secondary market for life insurance policies, backed by institutional investor capital.

The company announced today the promotion of Gary Kuchera to Chief Origination Officer.

Kuchera began his career at Coventry in 2006 as a financial underwriter, before moving to health insurer Independence Blue Cross for 2 years in 2013 and then returning to Coventry in 2015.

Since then he was risen through senior finance roles, to now take on the Chief Origination Officer position at the company, where he will now be tasked with helping to accelerate Coventry’s life insurance policy origination efforts, as well as working on new strategic opportunities.

Coventry said that his promotion comes “amid growing demand for Coventry’s life settlement solutions,” which enable policyowners to sell their unwanted or unneeded life insurance policies.

The secondary life policy, or life settlement market, sees investors and funds backing the portfolios of life policies created by origination specialists, offering an insurance-linked investment opportunity.

“This is an important appointment in the natural evolution of our company,” Reid Buerger, Coventry’s CEO commented. “To achieve our long-term goals, it is critical that we create new opportunities for key leaders to bring their knowledge and experiences to different areas of the business. Gary is a thoughtful and results-oriented leader whose ability to form and maintain relationships will serve both him and the company well as he steps into this position.”

Coventry led league tables for life settlements in 2020, with publisher The Deal saying that Coventry First and its affiliate, Life Equity, purchased more than 1,400 policies in 2020.

That was over three times as many policies as its closest competitor, and represented 40% of all life settlement transactions in 2020, according to The Deal’s data.

Access to life insurance policies is critical for those investors and fund managers building life settlements portfolios. Some ILS funds invest into life settlement related deals and portfolios with their capital and origination is key and can be a real differentiator for investment fund managers targeting the sector.

Life settlements are typically backed by institutional investor clients including pension funds and family offices, while specialists such as Coventry act as advisors and assist in originating policies for investors and funds.