Swiss Annuities and Life Insurance: Secure Returns, Asset Protection, and Privacy (Wiley Finance) (Hardcover)

by Marco Gantenbein (Author), Mario A. Mata (Author)
Key Phrases: private international law, investor control doctrine, foreign enforcement proceedings, United States, Federal Income Tax Considerations, Survey of Basic (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Does an exceptional job of laying out all the relevant issues for someone who is new to this area."STEP Journal June 2008

Product Description
Swiss Annuities and Life Insurance examines the key characteristics of Swiss annuities and life insurance, and explains how the use of these products can help you achieve asset protection, growth, and, in some cases, significant tax planning opportunities. Swiss annuities and life insurance are an excellent alternative investment, particularly for high-net-worth individuals. With this expert guidebook, you too will learn how to safely capitalize on these attractive products.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 332 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (April 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470118113
• ISBN-13: 978-0470118115
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #442,392 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #23 in	Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Insurance > Life
  #65 in	Books > Business & Investing > Finance > Foreign Exchange

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent review of these strategies, August 9, 2008

By	Jay Adkisson (Orange County, California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have long considered Mario Mata to be one of the best and most practical asset protection attorneys. Unlike many of the newbie asset protection planners who so lately have sprung up like so many weeds and who lack anything like real experience, Mario has actually been practicing in this area for well over a decade, and is currently a director of the American Bar Association's Asset Protection Planning Committee. Mario is the "real deal" and one of the very few asset protection attorneys whom I would trust with my own planning.

Planners have been using offshore annuities and life insurance products for many years, sometimes correctly and often not. Such financial devices are commonly referred to as "Swiss annuities" or "Swiss life insurance" although they might be purchased in another offshore haven, say, Bermuda or the Isle of Man. The IRS and Treasury guidelines for reporting and taxing these instruments are unclear and ever changing, making the area difficult to practice in, and unfortunately some planners misuse these products in what are clearly tax shelter schemes and tax evasion schemes.

Offshore annuities and offshore life insurance products are not for everybody, and in fact are correctly used only for a relatively very small segment of society, such as truly international families having members spread across at least a couple of different nations. For these families, sophisticated international trust planning which includes foreign annuity and life insurance planning is a must. For purely "domestic" families, such planning can be overkill, and the higher costs of such planning can quickly degenerate its efficiency.

This book is basically a collection of 14 articles on the subject, as written by 16 different authors. Each article gives a fairly detailed discussion of the technical issues involved with offshore annuities and life insurance. The depth of the articles is such that this is probably more of a book for learned legal and financial professionals than for the layman considering the purchase of such a product (such a person should hire the best counsel available and follow their guidance -- there are far too many minefields in this area for this to be anything like a "do it yourself" planning area). This is not anything like light reading, but consists of technically deep analysis of both Swiss law and how the IRS treats foreign annuities and life insurance products.

In the final analysis, this book will be a much referred-to tome found on the shelves of every planner who has an interest in this area. Highly recommended.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Informative, but insufficiently skeptical, September 21, 2008

By	Milo Jones "Milo Jones" (Italy & US) - See all my reviews

This book was certainly informative, and offers a good basic introduction to Swiss annuities.

On the other hand, perhaps because it was written largely by people with a vested interest in the business, the book is not very skeptical of the fee structures and expenses of many of these products. The fact is, for most US citizens, while Swiss annuities might make sense for asset protection purposes, it is very hard to find a way to make their total return (after both tax and especially after fees and expenses), compare favourably to properly structured comparable tax-deferred accounts. Fees and expenses matter, and these products routinely have an expense structure that destroys most of the power of compounding. In short, asset protection is expensive!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Nearly Usless Book, April 16, 2009

By	TravelingMan "Cpt. Nemo" (USA) - See all my reviews

This is a about as convoluted and complicated a book as one can imagine.

First off, it is written by over a dozen authors. Almost all are lawyers. Thus, the tone and style varies greatly; from the almost lucid to the incomprehensible.

It reminds me of the worst in academic writing, where professors write in obscure journals for each other in a language that only they can understand.

Maybe tax lawyers will understand this book. I don't know, I am not one.

What I wanted was a book that would explain to me what Swiss annuities are, the various types, how they work, what laws apply to them in the U.S., and where to learn more. This book left me much more confused than enlightened.

I finally gave the book to my accountant. He gave it back, saying he could not make heads or tails of it.