What Advisors Want from Annuity Issuers
This week, RIJ received a press copy of “What Advisors Want from Annuity and Insurer Providers-2019,” a study by Practical Perspectives, a Boxford, MA-based financial services market research...
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Talking Annuities with AIG’s Todd Solash
Solash, who leads AIG's Individual Retirement business, spoke with us about the company's approach to the annuity market. The NAIC recently reported AIG's overall Life and Retirement businesses as...
Risks that Can Ruin a Retirement, Part II
In retirement, "risk" can turn from an object of pursuit to an object of avoidance. In the second installment of a two-part article, our guest columnist continues his discussion...
Risks That Can Ruin a Retirement
In the first of a two-article series, the retirement expert, author and editor enumerates and describes the many risks that retirees face. (Spoiler alert: Mortality is not one of...
How Seeking Alpha Seeks Alpha—from Israel
At Seeking Alpha’s Tel Aviv headquarters, RIJ talked to the firm’s CEO, Eli Hoffmann, about how the blogger-clearinghouse makes a ton of money helping people who are trying to...
Shekel by Shekel: How Israelis Save
For the last decade, Israeli workers have contributed to mandatory defined contribution savings plans at work and must convert at least part of their savings to a lifetime income...
A Genuine ‘Value Fund’ Is Hard to Find
"Even if the fund says ‘value,’ there’s no likelihood that it’s a value fund,” said Martin Lettau of UC-Berkeley, co-author of a study showing that Dimensional's value funds may...
An FIA Designed By RIAs
The "ClearLine" fixed indexed annuity was developed by Security Benefit Life and DPL Financial Partners with input from the registered investment advisors who use DPL's no-commission annuity purchasing platform.
Notable Retirement Research of 2018
Our selection of ten outstanding retirement-related research papers from 2018 starts off with a summary of Joe Tomlinson's proposal for three new annuity products that have never been issued...
Annuities, RIAs and ‘Cargo Cult’ Thinking
Brighthouse Financial's Shield structured annuity joins products from Allianz Life, Jackson National and Global Atlantic on the Envestnet Insurance Exchange, where annuity issuers hope to engage registered investment advisors....
Two Client-Centric Income Strategies
We compare two easy-as-pie annuity strategies: Income starting at age 80 versus guaranteed income for the first 10 years of retirement. One hedges longevity risk, the other hedges sequence...
Money Myths, Legal Realities
At a conference at Harvard Law School called "Money as a Democratic Medium," law professors debated the origins, purposes, and rightful ownership of money in the modern era. (Photo:...
BlackRock, Microsoft & Retirement: What’s Up?
BlackRock and Microsoft's cryptic announcement of a new partnership on a platform for plan participants has puzzled industry executives, who shared their views 'on background' with RIJ. (Pictured: A...
Steve Vernon’s Guide to Retirement Success
Steve Vernon's latest book on retirement, "Retirement Game-Changers," teaches anyone how to win not just the game of retirement income, but the game of life-after-55. Vernon (pictured) is...
Greetings from the First ‘Retirement Management Forum’
Some 200 members of the Investments & Wealth Institute (IWI) came to Amelia Island, Florida, this week to learn about the principles underlying the Retirement Management Advisor designation, which...
Annuities ‘Compensate’ Even Short-Lived People
'Nature wants us to pool longevity risk,' writes annuity expert Moshe Milevsky. He explains why in a new paper, 'Swimming with Sharks: Longevity, Volatility and the Value of Risk...
Employer Match vs. Auto-Enrollment; The Winner Is…
'Most of the estimates from the literature substantially understate the effect of matching,' write analysts Nadia Karamcheva and Justin Falk of the Congressional Budget Office's Microeconomic Studies Division. (Image...
A Retirement Income Plan from United Income
One of the smallest of the robo-advisors (United Income) has some of the biggest backers (Morningstar's chairman and eBay's founder) and a veteran (HelloWallet) CEO. RIJ asked United Income...
New Bedfellows: Richard Neal and the 401(k) Industry
As the next Ways & Means chairman, the liberal Massachusetts congressman won't just be the gatekeeper of retirement legislation. He’s also the only legislator who can ask for President...
An Industry Haunted by Its Own History
The ghost of demutualization haunts much of the annuity industry today. But that topic was not on the agenda of the annual LIMRA conference in New York earlier this week...
