You wouldn’t even know that there is a Guinness World Record for selling the most expensive single life insurance policy in history. Well, there is, and the record is in the name of a young financier Dovi Frances who at 35 runs SG, LLC in Santa Barbara, California. The record policy worth $201 million was put together for a well known Silicon Valley billionaire. The policy was so large that it took more than a dozen underwriters to put together the transaction. It was a very complicated process and Frances claims that his firm specializes in taking care of the complex financial needs of the ultra rich.
Frances explained why anyone need a $201 million life insurance policy. He claimed that it was the most effective way to protect your estate after your death. An estate is taxed at about 45% in the US after the owner’s death. Billionaires are generally not very liquid but taxes after their death normally runs into hundreds of millions of dollars. Most billionaires have stocks and assets which are not easy to liquidate quickly. That’s why it is important that the high net worth individuals must think about the financial situation they will leave behind. People are generally not concerned about what will happen when they are gone but some people with access to good advice are making efforts to take care of the liabilities arising out of one’s death.
Frances has managed to build a good business at a very young age. He has tremendous drive and is passionate about his work. He grew up in Israel along with his three brothers. His father had inherited a small auto garage outside Tel Aviv from his father and grew it into a multi location business employing over 400 people. However Frances wasn’t interested in that business and wanted to do something by himself. He served in the Israeli army for over four years and then graduated from a business school. He joined Deutsche Bank in San Francisco in June 2008 and survived the financial market meltdown that soon followed because he excelled in selling loans. He took an initiative to get the super rich in the area to become clients of the bank and that’s how he came in contact of Sergey Grishin, a Russian billionaire. Soon he left the bank to launch SG, LLC. to help wealthy people secure jumbo loans.
