A tontine () is an investment linked to a living person which provides an income for as long as that person is alive. Such schemes originated as plans for governments to raise capital in the 17th century and became relatively widespread in the 18th and 19th centuries. Tontines enable subscribers to share the risk of living a long life by combining features of a group annuity with a kind of mortality lottery. Each subscriber pays a sum into a trust and thereafter receives a periodical payout. As members die, their payout entitlements devolve to the other participants, and so the value of each continuing payout increases. On the death of the final member, the trust scheme is usually wound up. Tontines are still common in France. They can be issued by European insurers under the Directive 2002/83/EC of the European Parliament. The Pan-European Pension Regulation passed by the European Commission in 2019 also contains provisions that specifically permit next-generation pension products that abide by the "tontine principle" to be offered in the 27 EU member states. Questionable practices by U.S. life insurers in 1906 led to the Armstrong Investigation in the United States restricting some forms of tontines. Nevertheless, in March 2017, The New York Times reported that tontines were getting fresh consideration as a way for people to get steady retirement income. History The investment plan is named after Neapolitan banker Lorenzo de Tonti, who is popularly credited with inventing it in France in 1653. He more probably merely modified existing Italian investment schemes; while another precursor was a proposal put to the Senate of Lisbon by Nicolas Bourey in 1641. Tonti put his proposal to the French royal government, but after consideration it was rejected by the Parlement de Paris. The first true tontine was therefore organised in the city of Kampen in the Netherlands in October 1670, and was soon followed by three other cities. The French finally established a state tontine in 1689 (though it was not described by that name because Tonti had died in disgrace, about five years earlier). The English government organised a tontine in 1693. Nine further government tontines were organised in France down to 1759; four more in Britain down to 1789; and others in the Netherlands and some of the German states. Those in Britain were not fully subscribed, and in general the British schemes tended to be less popular