Middleware is Central to In-Plan Annuities

By Kerry Pechter
Middleware is hub-and-spoke software that lets retirement plan recordkeepers and life insurers talk to each other. Steve McCoy of iJoin, a provider of managed account user interfaces, and Bill Mueller of IPX, a middleware provider, talk about their ventures with annuity issuers.
Anecdotal Evidence

An Odd Couple: Trump Visits My Half-Latino Town

By Kerry Pechter
Annuity sales are at an all-time high. Equity indexes are at all-time highs. Inflation has tapered, interest rates are favorable to life insurance companies, and unemployment is still low. The man-who-would-be-king aims to rescue us from that hell.
Bermuda Triangle

‘Asset-intensive’ annuity reinsurance has NAIC’s attention

By Kerry Pechter
At an Oct. 24 meeting, the NAIC's Life Actuarial Task Force (LATF) continued to hammer out a new guideline for 'asset adequacy testing' of offshore reinsurance reserves. Starting in 2025, it could raise the cost of 'asset-intensive business' for U.S. annuity issuers.

How ‘Demutualization’ Changed Everything, Part II

By Kerry Pechter
With demutualization, a life insurer went from being a cooperative aimed at providing its owner-customers with insurance at cost, to being a diversified financial corporation aimed at maximizing value for its shareholder-owners. Those are fundamental changes.

Honorable Mention

By Editorial Staff
Gainbridge, RetireOne to offer non-tax-deferred MYGA for RIAs; Income Lab launches new income planning tool; Schroders polls plan participants on appetite for private assets; Protective enhances its flagship variable annuity.

Bermuda Shorts

By Editorial Staff
Private credit sector growing fast: Financial Times; Venerable launches its own line-up of variable annuity insurance trusts.

COVER STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

October 2024

How T. Rowe Price Approaches the ‘401(k) Income’ Market

By Kerry Pechter
By bundling a deferred income annuity with a managed payout program, T. Rowe Price's optional 'out-of-plan' 401(k) income tool aims to boost participants' spending power in retirement by as much as 50%, relative to...
September 2024

J.P. Morgan Asset Mgt Joins the 401(k) Annuity Race

By Kerry Pechter
To educate participants, JPMAM's ‘My Retirement Income Planner,' an online tool for 401(k) participants, will help them decide whether to cover 25% of their plan savings with an Equitable or Prudential lifetime income...
August 2024

RIJ Launches the 401(k) Income Research Center

By Kerry Pechter
RIJ intends to give plan sponsors, plan advisors, retirement plan service providers and others an up-to-date, easy-to-access source of curated information and competitive intelligence on products and processes that can help 401(k) participants turn...