option of selling its securities with or without insurance, it will generally only use insurance when doing so results in overall cost savings. Municipal bond insurance premiums are generally paid up-front as a lump sum; while non-municipal bond insurance premiums are generally paid in periodic installments over time. In July 2008, the Association of Financial Guaranty Insurers ("AGFI"), the trade association of financial guaranty insurers and reinsurers, estimated that, since its inception in 1971, the bond insurance industry had saved municipal bond issuers and their taxpayers $40 billion. A majority of insured securities today are municipal bonds issued by states, local governments and other governmental bodies in the United States and in certain other countries. Bond insurance has also been applied to infrastructure project financing, such as those for public-private partnerships, bonds issued by non-U.S. regulated utilities, and U.S. and non-U.S. asset-backed securities ("ABS"). Financial guaranty insurers withdrew from the residential mortgage-backed securities ("RMBS") market after the 2008 financial crisis. Value to investors Investors purchasing or holding insured securities benefit from the additional payment source provided by the insurer if the issuer fails to pay principal or interest when due (which reduces the probability of a missed payment to the probability that not only the issuer but also the insurer defaults). The value proposition of bond insurance includes the insurers' credit selection, underwriting, and surveillance of the underlying transactions. Significantly, uninsured transactions are often not monitored by rating agencies following their initial rating issuance. In the event of default of such transactions, bond trustees often fail to take appropriate remedial actions absent direction and indemnity from the bondholders (which is typically not forthcoming). In contrast, bond insurers frequently have the ability to work directly with issuers either to avoid defaults in the first place or to restructure debts on a consensual basis, without the need to obtain agreement from hundreds of individual investors. Litigation to obtain recovery, should it be necessary, is the insurer's responsibility, not the investor's. The insurance may also improve market liquidity for the insured securities. The uninsured bonds of an individual issuer may trade infrequently, while bonds trading in the insurer's name are more likely to be actively traded on a daily basis. Investors in insured bonds are also protected from rating downgrades of issuers, so long as the insurer is more highly rated than the issuer. Following the global financial crisis of 2008, municipal market