Listen now (22 mins) | Listen Now Corporate Owned Life Insurance are life insurance policies corporations buy on their employees whereby the corporation is the named beneficiary. This practice, at least initially, was adopted as a way of insuring a company against the loss of a limited number of key executives. These policies also became attractive because both premium returns and benefits paid were not taxed. Over time large companies, like Walmart, purchased these policies on millions of employees increasingly for the tax advantages and, industry executives argued, to provide or afford employee and retiree medical benefits. Beyond the moral objection of profiting from an employee's death, even in instances where the person dies years after they left their employer, these polices perversely incent companies to compromise on insuring employee health and workplace safety. While regulatory limitations have been placed on these policies, in 2007 dead peasant's insurance was estimated to account for 30% of the life insurance market.