the inability to maintain or grow our strategic partnerships or our inability to realize the expected benefits from our relationship with the Standby Purchaser;
Closed Block - Our Closed Block represents all in­force participating insurance policies of Fidelity Life. The Closed Block was established in connection with our 2007 reorganization into a mutual holding company structure and represents all in-force participating insurance policies of Fidelity Life. Annuities and assumed life represents (i) our assumed life business, which consists of policies primarily written in the 1980s and early 1990s; (ii) our direct annuity contracts, which consist of approximately 77 structured settlement contracts that remain from a group of contracts entered into in the late 1980s; and (iii) our assumed annuities, which consist of contract-holder deposits assumed from a former affiliate under two coinsurance treaties entered into in 1991 and 1992. The 2019 demutualization of Members Mutual Holding Company had no impact on how the Closed Block is structured.
Efinancial produced 86.8% and 93.6% of the direct policies written by Fidelity Life for the years ended December 31, 2019 and December 31, 2018, respectively. We plan to increase the number of policies sold through Efinancial as we pursue our strategic plan
Persistency Experience. Many of the non-medically underwritten products that we issue have a limited amount of insurance industry information to use in developing policy lapse rates. We are developing our own historical experience as to expected lapse rates for these products and reflect our emerging experience in our pricing. If actual policy lapse rates exceed the lapse rates assumed in pricing our products, we may receive lower premium revenues and may not receive enough premium to cover all of our acquisition costs for the policy.
At December 31, 2019 and December 31, 2018, the estimated fair value of our fixed maturities, short-term investments and equity securities by fair value hierarchy was as follows:
Net realized investment gains (losses) result from sales of investment securities and OTTI for estimated credit losses of fixed income investments.
For the year ended December 31, 2019, our income tax benefit was $0.9 million compared to an income tax benefit of $2.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2018. The decrease of $1.5 million reflects decreased net loss attributable to the life sub-group offset by an increase in net loss attributable to the non-life sub-group which has a full valuation allowance. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations-Critical Accounting Policies-Income Taxes.”
For the year ended December 31, 2019, net loss was $1.2 million compared to net loss of $0.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2018. The increase in net loss of $0.6 million resulted primarily from higher life and annuity benefits and amortization of DAC, partially offset by an increase in net insurance premiums and net realized investment gains (losses).
We apply our overall investment strategy and guidelines on a consolidated basis for purposes of monitoring compliance with our overall guidelines. Almost all of our investments are owned by Fidelity Life and are maintained in compliance with insurance regulations. Critical guidelines of our investment plan include:
Asset quality guidelines applied on a portfolio basis and for individual issues that establish a minimum asset quality standard for portfolios and establish minimum asset quality standards for investment purchases and investment holdings,
Diversification guidelines that limit the exposure at any time to the total portfolio by investment sectors.
During the years ended 2019 and 2018, the Board of Directors of Fidelity Life approved the payment of $5.0 million and $7.0 million, respectively, in dividends to VHI. The dividends provided operating funds to VHI to support corporate operations and initiatives. Following the Conversion, Fidelity Life has agreed not to pay any common stock dividends without the approval of a majority of the company designees. In connection with the approval of the Conversion by the Illinois Director of Insurance, we agreed, for a period of twenty-four months following the completion of the offerings, to seek the prior approval of the Illinois Department of Insurance for any declaration of an ordinary dividend by Fidelity Life.