Private Placement Life Insurance In Plain English

Private placement life insurance (PPLI) seems to be all the rage these days in wealth planning conversations.¹ As estate-planning advisors, we’re regularly called on to advise on both life insurance strategies and, increasingly, income tax planning. It should come as no surprise, then, that more clients are asking about PPLI, which sits squarely at the intersection of those two disciplines. Too often, however, clients approach us having heard only about the potential income tax advantages of investing through PPLI policies, without a clear understanding of how those benefits are realized and the relevant trade-offs to obtain them. In practice, these conversations most often begin with a client presenting a PPLI proposal and asking whethe…