Your life insurance is meant as a hedge against personal tragedy. Wall Street increasingly wants to invest in it like a security.

Some of the world’s largest insurers and investment banks are selling bonds linked to life insurance and the immense cash flows associated with it. They are hoping to do something similar to what home lenders did in recent decades, when they packaged mortgages into securities that could be purchased by third parties and traded in a huge secondary market.

A Lively Market in ‘Death Bonds’
Source: Wall Street Journal (subscription required)