You bet your life insurance

Podcast: Planet Money (LS 83 · TOP 0.01% what is this?)
Episode: You bet your life insurance
Pub date: 2026-08-14

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Some of the biggest firms on Wall Street are, at this very moment, waiting for thousands of strangers to die to reap their returns. Because there’s a market for life insurance policies. And it’s legal.

You don’t have to actually die to get some of your life insurance money. Thanks to a secondary market for life insurance policies, you might be able to claw back money from beyond the grave. You just sell your policy to an investor. So when you die, the payout goes to them, instead of your family or beneficiary. 

On today’s show, how the wheels of finance transformed a desperate deal made during the AIDS crisis into a multi-billion dollar industry. 

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This episode was produced by Emma Peaslee and Willa Rubin. It was edited by Marianne McCune and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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