Will my clients have to pay the new Medicare surtax?
If your clients' modified adjusted gross income (AGI) and their investment income combine to put them over one of the income thresholds, they will owe the tax. (Got questions?...
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What Retirement Advisors Most Want to Know
In a recent webinar, RIIA asked attendees, including many advisors, for input on creating survey questions for an upcoming advisor poll. The responses reflected some of the most pressing...
An Annuity Fee Record with an Asterisk
First-time annuity fee reporting from Raymond James Financial of $61 million boosted the quarterly bank/thrift annuity fee income numbers to a record high, according to the latest Michael White-ABIA...
The Mid-Point of a Trying Year
A slowing economy, falling interest rates and de-risking strategies made for mixed second quarter results at the major publicly-held annuity issuers (current and former), excepting perhaps Lincoln Financial.
Who’s Afraid of the Fiscal Cliff?
Not Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution. He recommends that we let the Bush tax cuts expire and the automatic spending cuts occur—and then to build a more sensible...
Floor-and-Upside: A New Strategy for a New Era
When constructing retirement income investing strategies, advisors should try to plan for even impossible outcomes, writes David Macchia, president of Wealth2k, the retirement income marketing and modeling program.
The View from the Variable Annuity Trenches
VA issuers are a little like homeowners in the wake of the financial crisis: some carry a lot of risk and can do nothing but wait for the market...
The View from the Variable Annuity Trenches
VA issuers are a little like homeowners in the wake of the financial crisis: some carry a lot of risk and can do nothing but wait for the market...
Harold Evensky at Wharton
Advisors in particular will be interesting in Harold Evensky's comments on retirement income planning during this 39-minute after-dinner talk and slide presentation at the Pension Research Council's meeting in...
Traders Are Just Being Traders (But That’s No Excuse)
“Trading is a largely instinctive activity, strongly related to the amount of testosterone in the body,” writes Martin Hutchinson, our occasional guest columnist.
How an Advisor Views CDAs
“Being able to tell they have a guarantee is huge,” the fee-based advisor Kimberly Foss (pictured at left) told RIJAdvisor. “2008 was not fun and I...
Contingent Deferred Annuities: Still a Rare Bird
Only two life insurers—Transamerica Advisors Life and Great-West Life & Annuity—can be said to be actively marketing contingent deferred annuities, aka stand-alone living benefits. Phoenix is on the cusp.
Retirement Specialists are Generalists
Baby boomers will need retirement income solutions that embrace insurance and investments, and they will need advisors who can offer a full spectrum of products and processes. RIJAdvisor wants...
Building – and Selling – a Retirement Income Practice
"I came from the commission world and now have a retirement income planning practice that I have just signed an agreement to sell. If I were still doing commission-only...
How 401(k) Revenue-Sharing Works
This five-minute video from the Government Accountability Office explains the mechanics of revenue sharing between investment fund companies and 401k recordkeepers, a process that many 401k sponsors do not...
Wells Fargo to sell no-commission VAs
There will be four variable annuities on Wells Fargo’s new Advisory Variable Annuity platform, from Nationwide, Lincoln Financial, Pacific Life, and (later in 2012) Allianz Life.
Welcome to RIJ+Advisor
Welcome to RIJ+Advisor, a twice-monthly supplement to Retirement Income Journal. Our mission is to help financial advisors of all stripes to become specialists in helping Baby Boomers turn their...
Let These Tax-wise Algorithms Do Your Calculations
So far, LifeYield’s product has been adopted by Suntrust, Northwestern Mutual, ING, and Cambridge Associates. The firm is now in “serious discussions with seven of the 10 largest firms...
Prudential Files “2.0” Version of Highest Daily VA Rider
In the newest version of Prudential's Highest Daily lifetime income rider, the former M&E charge is split into an temporary premium-based fee to recover acquistion costs and a smaller,...
DTCC issues first-quarter annuity 2012 sales data
In the first quarter of 2012, DTCC's Insurance & Retirement Services division processed 12 million annuity transactions involving almost 3,000 different products worth over $38 billion for 106 insurance...
