Private Placement Life Insurance, Explained

What if I told you PPLI isn’t about insurance at all?

That’s usually how I open the conversation when a junior RM or new team member asks,

“Donald… can you explain what PPLI actually is? Like, without the technical stuff?”

Here’s the simplest answer I can give:

PPLI is a legal structure that allows a wealthy family to hold and grow their assets—quietly, tax-efficiently, and across borders—inside a life insurance policy.

It’s not about buying insurance.

It’s about using a globally recognized structure to solve problems that trusts, foundations, and offshore companies can’t always address today.

Think of it this way…

Imagine a family with $100M in real estate, private equity, and global securities.

They’re dealing with:

• Estate duties in multiple jurisdictions

• CRS reporting from 5 institutions

• Tax leakage from capital gains

• Assets that are hard to transfer without triggering visibility or liabilities

• Heirs in different countries with different tax rules

Now imagine all those assets quietly consolidated under one legal wrapper—

✅ No capital gains tax
✅ No inheritance tax
✅ No fragmented CRS reporting
✅ Still under the client’s control
✅ Seamless handover across generations

That’s what PPLI does.

It’s like a trust—but tax-optimized, fully compliant, and invisible to the noise.

Key Differences in Plain English

• With a trust: 
  The trustee manages the assets, the family gives up some control, and the structure is often visible to tax authorities under CRS.

• With PPLI: 
  The policyholder (usually the client or their family structure) retains control. The assets are held inside an insurance wrapper.
  And if structured correctly, the reporting is minimized, and the transfer to heirs is clean, quick, and tax-efficient.

There’s no magic.

Just legal, global structuring designed for this new era of transparency and scrutiny.

Common Misunderstanding:

“I thought insurance had cash value and needs to be declared?”

That’s true—for retail life insurance.

But private placement life insurance (PPLI), especially when designed with zero cash value, has no surrender value and may not even show up as a reportable financial account under CRS.

It’s precisely this difference that makes it so valuable for UHNW families who want discretion without breaking compliance.

Final Thought:

If you’ve heard of PPLI but don’t feel confident explaining it to your team or your client, you’re not alone.

Even senior advisors hesitate, not because it’s complicated—but because no one ever explained it without jargon.

If this helped clarify PPLI for you, I’ve written a deeper white paper that builds on this foundation—showing how top MFOs are using PPLI to discreetly solve for CRS exposure, estate duties, and cross-border succession.

It’s designed to be shared internally with your team—or with UHNW clients who are starting to ask the hard questions.

Just message me privately and I’ll send it your way.

You’ll never need to Google “what is PPLI” again.