Clients may hold millions in untapped insurance wealth, study finds. (Street Talk).

A draft report recently completed by economists at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Criterion Economics LLC in Washington, D.C., found that holders of life insurance policies who sold their policies to life settlement providers this year received $242 million in excess value that would have been forfeited to insurers.

The Wharton report, based on estimated 2002 figures, notes that among all insurance policies sold in life settlements in 2002 (estimated at $1.5 billion in face coverage amount), life settlement providers paid $336.3 million to acquire p