Tontine

Tontines are one of the world’s oldest and most enduring wealth management strategies, using longevity risk pooling to generate gains beyond traditional asset performance alone.
Tontines provide lifetime monthly distributions to members for as long as they remain alive.


When members pass away, their unused assets stay within the tontine and are redistributed among surviving members, enhancing future distributions over time.

While this concept may seem novel at first glance, tontines have been widely used by mainstream savers for centuries for a simple reason:

by pooling longevity risk, tontines enable members to sustain a higher standard of living throughout their lifetime than would typically be possible if they held the same assets outside of a tontine.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a digital currency designed to offer an alternative global form of payment that is not subject to the inflationary policies of central banks and governments. With 50m users in the US alone and $50bn to $100bn transacted daily, many governments, banks and sovereign wealth funds are beginning to stockpile it as a hedge against the collapse of traditional currencies.

irrevocable trust

An irrevocable trust is a standalone legal entity established under common law by a fiduciary for the benefit of one or more beneficiaries. Irrevocable trusts are often formed in jurisdictions where they are sheltered from taxation and in which the assets of the trust are protected from creditors.

decumulation

Decumulation refers to a pension or retirement trust that has begun drawing down assets to be paid to beneficiaries. For example, in the US an IRA account typically permits decumulation after the age of 59.5.

trustee

A trustee is a person or organization that establishes a trust for one or more beneficiaries and whom is obligated by their fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of those beneficiaries when managing the affairs of the trust

fiduciary duty

Fiduciary duty is the legal obligation where a person (the fiduciary) must act in the best interests of another person or group (the beneficiary/client), putting those interests ahead of their own and avoiding any conflict of interest.

For example, in a trust, the trustee has the fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the beneficiaries of the trust, whereas in an insurance company, the officers of the insurer have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of the insurers shareholders rather than in the best interest of their policyholders/clients.

letter of wishes

Under trust law, a letter of wishes is an informal, non-binding document created by the person who sets up the trust. It provides guidance or suggestions to the trustees about how they should manage the trust assets or when to make distributions to beneficiaries, without being legally enforceable.

The intentional lack of legal enforceability is a cornerstone of trust law without which the protection of the trust from taxes and creditors might be lost. The absence of legal enforceability does not affect the trustees fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of their beneficiaries.

insurance

Insurance is a contract where a person (the insured) transfers a risk to an insurer for a fee (called a premium) in return for a promise by the insurer to assume the risk of paying an amount to the insured if and when that risk materializes.

Tontine Trusts do not meet the definition of insurance because no risk is transferred to any other entity and no premiums are collected.

Whilst annuities share some characteristics with tontines and are mostly offered by insurers, they have historically been offered by governments (e.g. Social Security), banks and private individuals and as such should not be considered as necessarily being insurance products.

securities

A security is a tradable financial asset that holds value and can be bought, sold, or invested in with an expectation of profits based upon the efforts of a third party such as an asset manager.

The ability of an investor to make a profit when establishing a tontine trust or buying a life annuity is not determined by the trustee or insurer respectively as it is the responsibility of the member to take care of their health and survive long enough to receive back income in excess of their initial contributions.

qualified

Qualified monies refers to ordinarily taxable income that qualifies for exemption from taxes by virtue that it is held within a retirement account or pension rather than paid directly to the owner. Once the pension benefits start getting paid to the owner, the income paid out becomes taxable to the owner or their beneficiaries.

non-qualified

Non-qualified monies refers to monies upon which taxes have already been paid and which the owner of the money is free to spend or invest as they see fit.

Typically the majority of non-qualified monies are held in bank accounts, investment accounts, mutual funds and increasingly in digital currencies as well as commodities such as gold and silver.

class

A Tontine class is a category that tontine members are assigned to by the tontine trustees for the purpose of sharing their risk of living longer.

The trustees assign each member to these categories typically based upon similar life expectancies, sex and demographics.

When a member of a class passes away, whatever funds are leftover in their trust will be shared amongst the surviving members of the same class using our patented algorithms which are designed to ensure absolute fairness.

trust fund

A tontine trust fund refers to an irrevocable trust established in a tax efficient jurisdiction for the purpose of protecting wealth to enable a lifetime income to be paid to an individual, couple, family or other group of beneficiaries. Once established, the beneficiaries of the tontine trust fund cannot be changed.

Tontine Trust Funds can only be established with non-qualified monies. They cannot accept assets from existing qualified pension or retirement accounts except where no tax is payable when those monies are withdrawn from the old pension or retirement accounts (rare) or where the tax on such withdrawals has already been paid.

Proof of Reserves

Proof of Reserves is a method used by financial institutions, particularly digital asset exchanges or custodians, to demonstrate that they hold sufficient assets to back customer deposits or funds entrusted to them. It involves publicly verifying the existence and control of these assets, typically through cryptographic techniques, third-party audits, or transparent reporting.

blockchain

A Blockchain is a distributed ledger publicly displaying balances and transactions on a wallet represented by an anonymous ID address. The information includes a history of each transaction on the wallet which information can never be tampered with.

longevity

Longevity refers to the actual lifespan achieved by Members.

Life Expectancy

Life Expectancy refers to the average number of years that a member is expected to live for taking into account their age, sex and other demographic characteristics.

Liquidity

Liquidity refers to how easily an asset can be converted into cash or another asset without significantly affecting its price. High liquidity means quick, low-cost transactions; low liquidity implies slower sales or price volatility.

Volatility

Volatility refers to the likelihood that the price of an asset can appreciate or depreciate rapidly. Trustees of Trust Funds and Pensions typically prefer to minimise the overall volatility of their portfolios so as to maintain more predictable income levels over the long term.

tontine effect

The Tontine Effect supplements the trust balances of individual members from leftover monies of similar aged members that have passed away.

MyTontine

The MyTontine app by Tontine Trust is designed to give you full visibility over your expected income and the assets held by your trust. It enables you to authorise payments, top up your trust, adjust your investment policy and start or pause your income.

tax-sheltered

Tax-sheltered refers to legal methods of reducing or deferring taxes using approved financial instruments or accounts. These strategies operate within tax laws to minimize tax liabilities.

Tax evasion, in contrast, is the illegal act of deliberately avoiding taxes owed by misreporting income, inflating deductions, hiding assets, or engaging in fraudulent schemes to conceal money from tax authorities. Tax evasion carries severe penalties, including fines and imprisonment.

lifetime income

The patented Tontine system is designed to ensure that income continues even for members that are lucky enough to live to age 120+.

fractional reserve

Fractionally Reserved or 'Leveraged' Institutions include both banks and insurers which operate with a leveraged balance sheets, meaning that they only hold a small amount of equity (capital) relative to a large volume of assets and corresponding liabilities. In times of financial crises, these institutions are more vulnerable than fully reserved institutions such as trust banks. For this reason, banks and insurers are typically required to have fallback guarantees against deposit insurance institutions such as FDIC or insurance guarantee schemes which themselves are often fractionally reserved and as such are dependent upon the solvency of their member institutions for their own solvency. dimedaw

longevity yield

The strategic value of a Tontine is that you earn an additional type of yield simply for staying alive longer than other members of your tontine class with similar life expectancies.

The WSJ's MarketWatch describes this longevity yield as “a type of guaranteed ‘alpha’ not available in any other asset class.

Under normal circumstances, the longevity yield is low at younger ages but starts rising over time as members of the relevant tontine class get closer to their life expectancy ages.

In times of war or pandemics affecting members of a tontine class, longevity yields could rise faster.

In the event of medical breakthroughs affecting members of a tontine class, longevity yields could rise less quickly.

longevity risk

Longevity risk is the risk that you live so long that your savings run out. Research shows that between 60-70% of savers at, or near, retirement fear running out of money in old age more than dying.