What Does Ton-tine Mean?

The term tontine (also written as ton-tine) refer to an investment plan wherein the participants have to purchase shares in a common fund after which they obtain an annuity which continues to increase every time a contributor dies. In this manner the whole fund will go to the ultimate survivor or it could go to the people who survive after a specific period of time. The term could also be used to refer to each contributor's share of a tontine. The word tontine could also be used to mean the participants of a tontine.

It is a French term, so named after Lorenzo Tonti, who was a 17th century Italian-born French banker.

In cryptography, the term "tontine" applies to a secret sharing algorithm that allows individuals to share secret data, wherein any such person can reconstruct the same by combining their keys.