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Fed easing clobbers fixed annuities

Fixed annuities of all kinds were collateral damage of the Fed’s interest-rate easing move in March, as the central bank responded to the COVID-19 related crash in prices of stocks and bonds by lowering its target overnight rate to between zero and 0.25%.

Along with a new round of Fed purchases of bonds, the easing seems to have calmed investors. A drop in the overnight rate lowers the cost of borrowing generally and helps support the prices of existing bonds, but it also reduces the yield that issuers of fixed annuities can afford to offer to new buyers.

At $29.5 billion, total fixed annuity sales were 22% lower than in first quarter 2019, according to preliminary results from the Secure Retirement Institute (SRI) U.S. Individual Annuity Sales Survey.

“At the end of 2019, we had forecasted fixed annuity sales to fall in 2020. However, the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic—prompting the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to record low levels—created a challenging environment for annuity manufacturers,” said Todd Giesing, annuity research director at SRI, in a release. “All fixed products recorded double-digit declines.”

On the other hand, sales of registered index-linked annuities (RILAs), which are considered variable annuities, were $5.1 billion in the first quarter, up 44% from the prior year. It was a sales record for RILAs, which AXA (now Equitable) introduced in 2010. Overall variable annuity sales rose 16% in the first quarter, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of sales increases.

“RILAs are positioned to do well under these economic conditions,” Giesing said. “They offer the potential for growth with downside protection. We are forecasting RILAs to continue to grow in 2020.”

Within the fixed annuity category, fixed indexed annuity (FIA) sales fell for the third quarter in a row. At $15.8 billion, sales were down 12% from first quarter 2019, before President Trump succeeded in pressuring Fed chairman Jerome Powell to lower rates last summer. The spike in equity market volatility in March helped FIA sales, even as the 10-year Treasury rate dropped by 113 basis points.

Sales of fixed-rate deferred annuities fell 35% in the first quarter to $9.8 billion, compared with prior year results. However, this was 4% higher than sales results in the fourth quarter as investors sought the principal protection these products offer.

“As we saw during the Great Recession, we expect fixed-rate deferred product sales to improve in the second quarter as consumers seek to protect their investment from market volatility and losses,” the SRI release said.

Sales of single premium immediate annuities (SPIAs) fell to their lowest quarterly level in nearly seven years, as the annual payout rate for a joint-and-survivor SPIA fell to only about 5%.

At just $1.9 billion, first quarter SPIA sales were down 32% from first quarter 2019. Deferred income annuities, which don’t start paying out income until at least 13 months after purchase, totaled $530 million in the first quarter, down 16% from 2019.

Preliminary first quarter 2020 annuities industry estimates are based on monthly reporting, representing 82% of the total market. A summary of the results can be found in LIMRA’s Fact Tank.

The top 20 rankings of total, variable and fixed annuity writers for first quarter 2020 will be available around mid-May, following the last of the earnings calls for the participating carriers.

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

News from RIJ Corporate Subscribers

Public pensions shed $419 billion in Q1: Milliman

During Q1 2020, the overall funded ratio of the nation’s 100 largest public defined benefit pension plans suffered the single largest quarterly drop in the history of the Public Pension Funding Index (PPFI), Milliman, the creator of the index, reported this week.

The PPFI decreased from 74.9% to 66.0% between Jan 1 and March 31. Economic volatility from the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a $419 billion loss in the market value of assets for these pensions, which in aggregate experienced investment returns of -10.81% in Q1. Individual plans in the PPFI had estimated returns ranging from -17.41% to 4.76%.

“The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has completely wiped out any public pension funding gains we saw last year,” said Becky Sielman, author of the Milliman 100 Public Pension Funding Index. But “it’s important to remember that most public pension plans use some sort of asset smoothing mechanism to dampen the impact of market gyrations,” she added.

Sorting the plans by funded ratio, four plans now remain at 90% funded or higher, down from 20 plans in the previous quarter. At the lower end of the spectrum, nine plans fell below the 60% funded mark, bringing the total number under 60% to 35, up from just 26 at Q4 2019.

The total pension liability (TPL) continues to grow and stood at an estimated $5.355 trillion at the end of Q1 2020, up from $5.313 trillion at the end of Q4 2019.

SEC awards over $27 million to whistleblower

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced an award of more than $27 million to a whistleblower who alerted the agency to misconduct occurring, in part, overseas.  After providing the tip to the Commission, the whistleblower provided critical investigative leads that advanced the investigation and saved significant Commission resources.

“This award marks several milestones for the program,” said Jane Norberg, Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower.  “This is the largest whistleblower award announced by the Commission this year, and the sixth largest award overall since the inception of the program.  This award also brings the total amount awarded to whistleblowers by the SEC over the $400 million mark.”

The SEC has awarded approximately $425 million to 79 individuals since issuing its first award in 2012. All payments are made out of an investor protection fund established by Congress that is financed entirely through monetary sanctions paid to the SEC by securities law violators. No money has been taken or withheld from harmed investors to pay whistleblower awards.

Whistleblowers may be eligible for an award when they voluntarily provide the SEC with original, timely, and credible information that leads to a successful enforcement action. Whistleblower awards can range from 10 percent to 30 percent of the money collected when the monetary sanctions exceed $1 million.

As set forth in the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC protects the confidentiality of whistleblowers and does not disclose information that could reveal a whistleblower’s identity.

Silvur: A new app from Kindur, a robo-adviser

Robo-advice platform Kindur has launched a new smartphone app called Silvur, with which users can “check at any time to see where they are with their goals and get useful savings and guidance to reach,” Kindur announced this week.

According to Kindur’s release, Silvur estimates Medicare costs and Social Security benefits to illustrate Babyboomers’ retirement income and expenses. Silvur’s Marketplace feature offers “cash back” discounts on purchases at Uber Eats, Walgreens, Hulu and other retailers.

Silvur is available for download on iOS in the Apple App Store, and will be soon available on Android in the Google Play Store.

According to a Kindur-sponsored survey, 79.3% of Babyboomers say they would like a simplified process of post-retirement financial planning. In addition, Boomers’ concern that the coronavirus or other source of market instability would impact retirement funds or their ability to retire on time has risen nearly 50% since the start of the COVID-19 quarantine.

Silvur offers personalized projections based on current income, spending, assets, and account balances, the release said. Financial information can be as detailed as users choose by linking accounts or estimating assets. As someone’s income changes, the progress towards their goals will too.

Kindur is offering a free advice hotline, the release said. Anyone can schedule a free 15-minute call with a retirement advisor at Kindur or text Kindur at (800) 961-3572 with questions. Kindur has also made available a virtual calculator to estimate Social Security benefits.

Retirement isn’t what most pre-retirees expect: Allianz Life

Common perceptions about when retirement will start and what it will be like don’t match the experiences of people already in retirement, according to the new 2020 Retirement Risk Readiness Study from Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.

While many non-retirees expect to retire when they are “financially ready” (46%) or in order to “have fun while they still can” (35%), half of survey respondents said they retired earlier than expected, often because of unanticipated job loss (34%) and healthcare issues (25%).

The Retirement Risk Readiness Study surveyed three categories of Americans to get different perspectives on retirement:

  • Pre-retirees (those 10 years or more from retirement);
  • Near-retirees (those within 10 years of retirement);
  • Those already retired.

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of non-retirees think it is likely they will work at least part time in retirement, but only 7% of retirees are currently working at least part time.

The closer people are to retirement, the less keen they are to work.

When asked if they would rather retire at age 55 and have their basic expenses covered in retirement or work until age 75 and live more extravagantly in retirement, only 23% of retirees said they would prefer to work longer (versus 33% of near-retirees and 48% of pre-retirees).

In other findings:

  • More than half (55%) of non-retirees said they are worried they won’t have enough saved for retirement and six in 10 said running out of money before they die is one of their biggest worries.
  • Forty-two percent of those within 10 years of retirement said they are currently unable to put away any money for retirement (versus 34% of pre-retirees), and almost one-third (32%) of near-retirees say they are way too far behind on retirement goals to be able to catch up in time (versus 30% of pre-retirees).
  • Asked about choices they are making or planning to make, less than a third (32%) said they want to save more in a retirement account; 12% said they are setting long-term financial goals and only 6% said they want to make a formal financial plan with a financial professional.
  • Less than one-third (30%) of non-retirees say they currently have a source of guaranteed income in their portfolio to help them meet retirement goals.
  • Nearly four in 10 (39%) say they plan to purchase a guaranteed income product in the future, only 3% view it as a top priority.

Allianz Life conducted an online survey, the 2020 Retirement Risk Readiness Study, in January 2020 with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 individuals age 25+ in the contiguous USA with an annual household income of $50k+ (single) / $75k+ (married/partnered) or investable assets of $150k.

MetLife waives certain small business service fees

Eighty-four percent of small business owners say they are concerned about the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on their business, and a majority (58%) are very concerned, according to a recent poll from MetLife and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

To help small businesses weather the economic fall-out and immediate challenges of COVID-19, MetLife is offering several resources to both small business owners and their employees. Effective today, MetLife is making the following available to our small business customers:

Financial Wellness. Small businesses with fewer than 100 employees can now access COVID-19-related guidance on cash flow issues, IRS taxpayer relief, government legislation, market volatility and asset allocation through MetLife’s PlanSmart Financial Wellness planners.

For 90 days, small business owners and their employees will have phone access – at no cost to them – through our alliance with Ernst & Young LLP, the U.S. firm (EY), to credentialed EY financial planners.

Overall Wellness. Overall individual health and well-being is a top priority during a crisis. To help our small business customers address these needs, MetLife is offering a dedicated COVID-19 hotline provided by LifeWorks. Through the hotline, small business owners and their employees will have access to services including immediate emotional support, research and referrals along with guidance and resources to cope with COVID-19. The hotline is available to all customers with fewer than 500 employees through September 30.

No rate increases. MetLife will not increase rates on any Group Benefits products for customers who have fewer than 500 employees for June 1, 2020, through September 1, 2020, renewals.

Additionally, MetLife is making the following available for all customers and their employees:

Financial Wellness Hub. This dynamic new financial wellness microsite is designed to guide employees at all companies and in all circumstances as they actively manage stress, navigate life choices, and manage their finances in this volatile environment. The hub, which will expand over time, helps consumers think about what they need to do now and how they can prepare for the future.

Legal document access and review. Through the end of July, MetLife Legal Plans will provide free document review and consultation to all employees, regardless of whether or not they are signed up for the service, of employers that offer MetLife Legal Plans. Employees can access our network attorneys to get answers to questions related to legal issues they may be facing and have attorneys review estate planning documents or insurance forms.

These customer offerings follow MetLife Foundation’s announcement on March 31 that it is committing $25 million to the global response to COVID-19 in support of communities impacted by the pandemic.

Securian Financial waives 401(k) COVID-19 and hardship distribution fees

Securian Financial is waiving all COVID-19 related 401(k) distribution fees for the retirement plans it serves as recordkeeper and, moving forward, will permanently make all hardship distributions fee-free to customers—regardless of the triggering event.

Securian Financial will also act as an ERISA 3(16) fiduciary for participant distributions and loans under the CARES Act, at no additional cost, for its existing full-service 401(k) employer customers. The company will also provide these customers with a suite of wellness services to make available to their employees, free-of-charge, through the end of the year.

Under the recently enacted CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act, individuals younger than age 59½ can withdraw up to $100,000 from their 401(k) without paying the usual 10% penalty provided the distribution meets certain criteria. Securian Financial will not charge customers a fee for COVID-19 related 401(k) distributions, and to ensure equitable treatment, the company is permanently waiving all 401(k) hardship distribution fees.

For all full-service 401(k) employer customers who provide relief to their employees under the CARES Act, Securian Financial will assume the role of ERISA 3(16) fiduciary1 at no additional cost—reducing employers’ administrative responsibilities and lessening their fiduciary burden. Securian Financial will also waive the ordinary applicable plan amendment fee.

The wellness services Securian Financial is making available free-of-charge to its 401(k) customers through the end of the year include access to professional financial and grief counselors, self-service tools to prepare legal documents such as a will, power of attorney or health care directive, and relevant education.

Few near-retirees understand Social Security: MassMutual

“Better but still not great” is how MassMutual is characterizing the results of its latest assessment—the third since 2015—of how well near-retirees’ (ages 55 to 65) in the U.S. understand their future Social Security benefits.

This year, 33% of those surveyed failed a basic knowledge quiz about Social Security, while 19% received a D.  Only 3% got an A+ by answering all 12 true/false statements correctly. In 2015, only one person got all answers correct and 62% of those age 50+ failed and only one got an A+. In 2018, 47% failed.

Almost all Americans (94%) know that if they take benefits before full retirement, the monthly benefit will be reduced, but only 69% understood their benefits at full retirement age under current law. Only 28% knew that you don’t have to be a U.S. citizen to collect Social Security retirement benefits.

The most significant differences Those between ages 60 and 65 were more likely than those between ages 55 and 59 to correctly answer questions related to full retirement age, spousal benefits and ex-spouse benefits.

Few people were aware of their right to “voluntary suspension.” Those with a dire need for retirement income can take Social Security benefits before full retirement age and then, at full retirement age, suspend benefits and draw from other income sources for a period of time “to basically fill their Social Security credit bucket back up to become whole (or near whole) for Social Security benefits for the rest of their lifetime,” the MassMutual release said.

Free term life for front-line health workers

In other news, MassMutual launched HealthBridge, which will provide free term life insurance to frontline healthcare workers across Massachusetts and Connecticut risking their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. MassMutual is offering local healthcare workers no-cost policies of up to $25,000.

All active employees of licensed hospitals, urgent care centers or emergency medical services providers in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the primary operational locations for many of MassMutual’s employees, whose jobs may involve occupational exposure to the virus are eligible for the 3-year term life policies. By uploading proof of employment and filling out a short application on the HealthBridge page, qualified healthcare workers will receive this free element of financial protection – completed fully online – from MassMutual.

Additionally, the company extended its free FutureSmart digital financial literacy curriculum beyond educators to families in which the parents/guardians are currently taking on secondary roles as their children’s teachers.

HealthBridge, totaling $3 billion of insurance coverage, is an extension of MassMutual’s current LifeBridge program, which has provided free life insurance for nearly two decades to income-eligible families to help children with educational expenses in the event a parent or guardian passes away.

¸© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Further thoughts on the equity risk premium

Dear editor,

In response to your April 6 article, “The Shape-Shifting Equity Premium,” I’d like to point out the following:

  1. The inflation illusion. Stocks were a tremendous buy in the 1970s when interest rates rose with inflation. You should always make clear that you are talking about the real interest rate.
  2. Risk premium versus risk.  If (real) interest rates fall and the equity risk premium stays the same, it is still likely that the risk has risen. Put another way, if the equity risk premium is 5%, and interest rates fall to 0% from 2%, then expected equity returns fall to 5%. Assuming that is below the long-term mean of 7%, the risk of holding stocks at high valuation levels is much greater since there is a likely reversion back to more normal (mean) valuations. Note the implications here for DB pension plans and pensioners.
  3. The current wealth bubble.  In my article on the Third Postwar Wealth Bubble (Journal of Business Economics) last year, I showed how we were at an all-time high in terms of net-worth-to-income. (My ratio was more like a price/earnings ratio for all assets than for the stock market by itself.) Yes, we’re below the all-time high now, but we’re still way up relative to historical precedent. This bubble and its sustainability are related to your article’s mention of the Fed “indulging the fallacy” that risks are minimal. The Fed and the related huge international investment in U.S. Treasuries and other assets can only indulge that type of fallacy for so long. Put another way, the Fed’s power (like Congress’s fiscal power) to turn the economy around is in the second derivative (e.g., the change in the change in the money supply)—which cannot forever be kept positive.

Sincerely, Eugene Steuerle

Urban Institute

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Insurance companies impacted by equity slide: AM Best

The negative impact to insurance companies’ capital and surplus as a result of sharp equity market declines could top the surplus losses experienced in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, according to a new AM Best special report, “Hit to Surplus from Equity Exposures Expected.”

“The 20% decline in the Dow Jones since the end of 2019 is hurting U.S. insurers’ balance sheets,” the report said. “At the height of the financial crisis last decade, the stock market dropped 50%, which led to the property/casualty industry reporting $55 billion in unrealized losses on unaffiliated stock investments in 2008, while the life/annuity segment reported more than $23 billion and the health segment nearly $4 billion.

“These losses contributed to capital and surplus declines of 11.9% for property/casualty insurers, 5.6% for life/annuity writers and 7.8% for health insurers. Significant unrealized losses and their adverse effects on capital because of the COVID-19-led downturn and economic fallout may well be on the horizon for U.S. insurers.”

According to the report, the property/casualty segment currently has the highest exposure to unaffiliated common stock, at almost 18% of invested assets in 2018, versus 12% in 2009. The health segment’s exposure now is approximately 9%, while the life/annuity segment has maintained an exposure of approximately 1%.

Any ultimate impact on the insurance industry remains to be seen; however, the impact will be uneven. Just under 50% of property/casualty companies have unaffiliated equity holdings, while 45% of life/annuity entities and more than 75% of health companies have no exposures.

The property/casualty segment also has the greatest share of companies with an unaffiliated common stock exposure equal to more than half their capital, but that share is relatively small, at less than just 10%. These companies would see the greatest hit to capital given their larger relative exposures. Additionally, the report lists AM Best-rated entities that have unaffiliated common stock exposures greater than their capital and surplus levels, the vast majority of which are in the property/casualty segment.

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Please Don’t Raid Your Retirement Account

“First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.”

The poet Emily Dickinson described death by exposure that way. She’s referring to the three stages of hypothermia. In the last stage, the body’s core heat migrates outward, creating a feverish delirium.

I felt a chill after reading that the CARES Act would allow Americans who’ve lost their jobs because of the coronavirus to withdraw up to $100,000 from 401(k) plans or IRAs without penalty. Sounds like a recipe for financial hypothermia in retirement.

It makes sense not to punish anyone for taking withdrawals from retirement accounts during the pandemic. But why encourage withdrawals (up to $100,000) that will only reduce future security? Most won’t have time to replenish their accounts before they retire. If they don’t pay back the money in three years, they’ll owe income tax on it.

The measure also seemed at odds with other federal government COVID-19 relief measures, like enhancing unemployment insurance benefits, offering forgivable payroll loans to businesses, and sending out $1,200 checks ($2,400 to couples filing jointly and $500 to minor children), all of which should help prevent raids on long-term savings.

People who work on retirement security are evidently as perplexed by the measure as I was.

“My hope and expectation is that only those individuals with no other options will tap their 401(k)/IRA balances during this crisis,” Alicia Munnell told RIJ. She’s the widely-published and widely-quoted director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

“Those who are lucky enough to keep their jobs should have no need to tap their accounts, and probably recognize that they would lock in their losses by selling at the bottom of the market. Those who lose their jobs, hopefully, would explore every other option, including unemployment insurance, the $1,200 payment, or borrowing from parents or children, to avoid tapping their 401(k),” she said.

“For those forced to tap their 401(k), I am glad that they will not have to pay a penalty.  But the size of the penalty-free amount—$100,000—is worrisome. The median 401(k)/IRA balances for households approaching retirement (55-64) is $135,000. The lower-paid, most financially hard-pressed holders of 401(k)s may think they’ve been given a green light to essentially empty their accounts. Even though the law allows re-contributing the withdrawn amounts, these vulnerable households are never going to have the financial wherewithal in the next three years to put $100,000 into a retirement plan.”

“It’s a bit of a mixed message,” said Linda K. Stone, a pension expert in Bryn Mawr, Pa., in an interview this week. “Plan sponsors have spent a lot of money on getting people to enroll in their plans and to prevent leakage.

“Now some 401(k) companies are waiving the fees they normally charge for withdrawals to make it easier for people to get their money. But the assets are depressed right now, so they’ll be selling at a low point. And most people have saved very little to begin with. You have to think of your future self. Your future self will want that money to stay in your retirement account.”

Jack Towarnicky, a former executive director of the Plan Sponsor Council of America, also regretted the new law. He’d have preferred loans or emergency lines-of-credit from retirement plans, not withdrawals.

“Unsurprisingly, we have sown the seeds of unpreparedness for the next crisis,” he told RIJ in an email. “Instead of changes that would create liquidity without triggering leakage, we enabled cash-outs for tens of thousands, perhaps millions who have not lost employment. COVID-19 in-service withdrawals will be the ‘liar loans’ of 2020.

“The CARES Act’s provisions do not limit distributions to specific needs nor require proof of economic loss, while concurrently allowing employees to self-certify that they are qualified individuals. The Bipartisan Budget Act, the SECURE Act and the CARES Act all create incentives and new options encouraging leakage for workers who have not lost employment.

“A more thoughtful approach would have created liquidity without leakage. Almost all who have a need due to separation or layoff already have full access/liquidity to their retirement savings,” he said, referring to rollovers to IRAs. In his email, Towarnicky recommended this:

Plan sponsors should consider making the following changes (all possible today):

  1. Eliminate hardship withdrawals
  2. Change the loan structure to a “line-of-credit” basis (minimum $500 or $1,000) so participants can rely on access
  3. Improve plan loan processing to 21st-century functionality by:
  • Upon initiating a loan, require participants to enter into a “commitment bond” to repay the loan, acknowledging that they are the borrower, and that the lender is their “future self.”
  • Add electronic banking so that funds can be disbursed promptly to a bank account as needed, and so loans can be repaid and initiated during furloughs, leaves of absence, layoffs, and post-separation.

Congress could facilitate this by removing arbitrary barriers to liquidity without leakage. It could index the loan limit [to inflation], which has been $50,000 since the passage of ERISA in 1974, when the average assets per defined contribution plan participant were only $6,431.

If 401(k) plans were still what they were 35 or 40 years ago—profit-sharing plans that accompanied defined benefit pensions—then dipping into them for emergencies would do little or no long-term damage. But now that millions of Americans rely on the savings in their 401(k)s and rollover IRAs (and Social Security) as their primary source of retirement income, it makes less sense. Paying for current hardship with future hardship is obviously short-sighted and potentially self-defeating.

Ironically, COVID-19 strikes the retirement industry at a time when financial wellness programs have just begun to address the need for emergency “side-car” funds in workplace retirement plans. Although heads-of-households know that they should keep several months of living expenses in cash, research by Munnell and others has shown that most Americans have little or no financial buffer.

You might object that the federal government shouldn’t tell people how to save or spend at all, and not be paternalistic. But we’re talking about tax-deferred accounts that are designed to produce retirement income. It would be smart, not paternalistic, to ease today’s financial pain without contributing to an even bigger retirement funding crisis down the road.

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

The CARES Act Isn’t Careful Enough

The “blitz” of World War II, when German bombs rained down on London and England’s other large industrial and commercial cities from November 1940 to May 1941, had relatively little effect on the operations of small businesses, despite the physical destruction and loss of life they wrought.

Will the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects be even more devastating to the U.S.’s small businesses and their employees than the Luftwaffe’s bombs were to English shops?

This column provides an updated summary of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and then turns to the growing debate over how best to aid American small businesses—businesses with less than 500 employees—and their workers.

The CARES Act

Including its tax measures—mostly tax breaks for businesses—the CARES Act is now estimated to amount to $2.3 trillion, not $2 trillion, in stimulus measures. This does not include the measures that the Federal Reserve is taking to support credit markets. Given its massive size and impact on the federal debt, it will be important to ensure that this money is spent effectively. CARES’s main features, as described by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) are as follows:

Measures to benefit households and individuals
  • Issuance of checks or direct deposits to taxpayers of $1,200 for single filers with AGI up to $75,000 and $2,400 for joint filers with AGI up to $150,000 plus up to $500 per child ($290 billion) Rebates are phased out at a rate of $50 for every $1,000 in income above these limits.
  • Expansion of the coverage of state unemployment insurance (UI) and increase the weekly payment by a flat rate of $600 for about four months, while increasing the maximum payment period by thirteen weeks ($260 billion)
  • Expansion of the social safety net, including the SNAP and other nutritional aid ($42 billion)
Measures to support business
  • Loans and other assistance to large corporations ($510 billion), of which $454 billion will support loans to corporations, states and municipalities through a Federal Reserve facility and $29 billion will be loaned to airlines. The Federal Reserve will be providing massive support to all sectors of the economy by financing the purchase of loans, whose collateral terms will be relaxed. (For some reason, large corporations receiving aid were not required to offer paid sick leave to their furloughed employees.)
  • Loans and other assistance to small businesses ($377 billion)—also known as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)—as explained below. Congress has already begun to debate an expansion of this program.
  • Support to transportation providers and industries ($72 billion), including $33 billion to airlines and their contractors to avoid furloughs and pay cuts.
Other expenditure programs to support critical infrastructure and public services
  • Grants and other assistance to hospitals and other medical facilities (at least $180 billion)
  • Assistance to state and local government ($150 billion)
  • An increase in FEMA’s disaster assistance fund ($45 billion)
  • Increased education spending (at least $32 billion)
  • Other (at least $25 billion)
Tax measures
  • Corporate tax reductions (mainly increased interest and operating loss deduction allowances ($210 billion) and payroll tax reductions for businesses that retain workers at a loss (an additional $55 billion)
  • Personal tax reductions ($20 billion)

The stimulating effect of the tax relief for businesses is highly uncertain. It is unlikely to result in anything close to a dollar-for-dollar increase in investment. Its effect on decisions to retain workers is also uncertain. As noted in my March 26th column, the direct payments to taxpayers are not well targeted to those in need. No money is provided for non-filers, who are among the most vulnerable. The effect of that provision is therefore hard to predict.

Rescuing small businesses and their employees—the United States contrasted with Europe

In the U.S., small businesses are being offered loans through the banking system and the Small Business Administration (SBA). The loans will be converted to grants if the recipients keep all of their employees on the payroll for at least eight weeks, even if they are not working. Funds may also be used to cover rental payments and other operating costs.

Small businesses will need assistance along the lines of the PPP to cover the wages and salaries of their employees, if these are not to be laid off, and to pay for their employees’ health insurance. Unemployment insurance will help support workers who have been laid off, particularly the low-paid, but will not pay health insurance premiums. Small businesses will also need help with rental and mortgage payments, property tax, and certain other expenditures.

Some prominent American economists and economic journalists have criticized this approach as being too indirect, and unlikely to prevent the permanent closure of many businesses. They contrast it with the approaches of the United Kingdom and Denmark, where the central government directly supports firms that retain their workers by paying a very high share of their wages, while also providing money to make rental and mortgage payments for other obligations.

In the United Kingdom, private sector workers will receive 80% of their pay, and in Denmark 75%. Canada has also just approved legislation that will provide funds to businesses to pay up to 75% of their employees’ salaries to keep them on the payroll.

The success of the U.S. approach will depend on how quickly and efficiently the program can be implemented. Similarly, relief to laid-off workers, including the self-employed who are now without work, will depend on how speedily their states can handle the huge increase in UI claims. Many or most of those workers who do not remain at least nominally attached to their employer will lose their health insurance, although furloughed workers are an exception.

It would be grim indeed if large numbers of small businesses proprietors were forced into bankruptcy. Unlike London during the blitz, however, the pandemic will not destroy physical premises. Their businesses can in principle be reopened, possibly by new owners. That said, they might well be shuttered for some time even after the pandemic has done its worst. Large-scale bankruptcies obviously have to be avoided, and the economic and social consequences of the associated unemployment would be dire.

The United Kingdom and Denmark have important advantages in implementing their approach. In particular, they are both highly centralized. The U.K., the devolution of some governmental responsibilities to Scotland and Wales notwithstanding, is a highly centralized country. It has only one UI administration, as does Denmark, which has the added advantage of being very small. Its labor market is about one-thirtieth the size of the U.S. labor market.

In addition, in neither country does unemployment spell the end of health insurance. Canada’s federal system is in some respects like that of its giant neighbor, but UI is centralized, which is easier because of Canada’s much smaller population. The more flexible character of the U.S. labor market may have one notable advantage over Europe: workers can more easily move to those few sectors where labor demand is growing, like delivery services and health.

The U.S. cannot remake its institutions into a European model overnight, even if there were sufficient public support for so great a political and constitutional sea change. It must work with the institutions it has. Every effort has to be made to make the loans program work.

News reports speak of banks’ being swamped by requests, and processing only applications from established customers. Banks themselves are also reported as needing more guidance. The states differ in their ability and perhaps their eagerness to process UI claims, and news reports suggest that some states are definitely behind the curve.

Federal legislation may be needed to prevent the loss of health insurance by the unemployed. There is no good reason for the exemptions of large corporations from offering paid sick leave. On the plus side, the direct payments to households from the IRS have started to flow.

The pandemic will inflict staggering losses in life unless the stay-at-home rule is rigorously enforced for a sufficient time. That said, a prolonged absence of workers from the workplace, necessary as it is, is bound to have a heavy cost in purely economic terms and in personal misery.

The writer, a naturalized citizen born in Nova Scotia, believes that the pandemic has made clearer than ever the inequities and inefficiencies of his adopted country’s social safety net and health insurance system. If this period of agonizing trial can lead to genuine reform, perhaps we may say that the blood, sweat and tears (to borrow Winston Churchill’s famous words in 1940) of our most vulnerable citizens will have not been entirely in vain.

The author was founding editor of the Journal of Retirement and a former International Monetary Fund official. He would like to thank Dallas Salisbury, Allison Schrager and Elaine Weiss for valuable comments. He alone is responsible for any remaining errors of fact or interpretation.

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Stormy Weather for Life Insurers

Despite the impacts of lower equity prices, the Fed’s zero interest rate policy, business disruptions and a hefty amount of triple-B bonds on their balance sheets, life insurance companies are bearing up fairly well during the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s the opinion of David Paul, a principal at ALIRT, an insurance research firm that evaluates the credit strength of U.S. life, property & casualty and health insurers for a client base that include insurance product distributors, insurers, asset managers, and risk managers.

David Paul

Paul spoke at length with RIJ earlier this week. What he calls the U.S. life industry’s “decent surplus position” and the Federal Reserve’s willingness to support the bond market should help companies weather the current storm even as low interest rates potentially weaken the future profitability or availability of their products.

Below is an edited transcript of the conversation between RIJ editor Kerry Pechter and ALIRT’s David Paul:

RIJ: David, you’re used to reviewing the balance sheets of life insurers for strengths and weaknesses. What do you see right now?

Paul: As concerns their balance sheets, the more asset leverage a company has—which is an expression of surplus to general account invested assets—the greater the stress that can occur in a downturn like this. Overall, the U.S. life industry has asset leverage of just south of 12%. So it’s fairly leveraged. But that’s one of the best ratios in 20 years. And, given the long-term nature of their liabilities, this type of leverage is normal.

RIJ: These surpluses—are they related to a company’s reserves?

Paul: I heard a recent news report that the industry has plenty of “reserves.” But when one talks about reserves, in our world this is really a liability term. Surplus is different. As the difference between assets and liabilities, surplus is the financial cushion that’s available to offset investment losses or strengthen existing reserves, if needed.

Let’s say an insurance company sold variable annuities with rich lifetime income guarantees. It may have to put up more reserves if those guarantees go “into the money.” Or, if mortality trends and/or projected investment returns weaken, reserves would have to be strengthened for the products sold. The surpluses, which are hopefully being constantly bolstered by operating earnings, are there to provide any needed strengthening of existing reserves.

RIJ: And where do earnings fit into that picture?

Paul: Imagine a situation where the reserves are fine [i.e., sufficient] and the investments are fine [i.e., not impaired]. In that case, the earnings will become extra funds that go into surplus. The U.S. life insurance industry today is generally profitable. It has had a nice run. It’s in a relatively good balance sheet position. And, as a result, its surplus has been built up.

RIJ: Life insurers, like other investors, have been searching for yield by taking more risk and buying more BBB-rated bonds, which are the lowest-rated investment-grade fixed income instruments, than they traditionally have. In a credit crisis, will those holdings come back to haunt them?

Paul: The aggregate amount of BBB-rated bonds held by U.S.-based life insurers has exploded over the past few years. But, as I mentioned, the industry’s surplus has also grown nicely over the last decade. So the industry’s leverage to these bonds is not out of whack. For instance, the 10-year average ratio of BBB bonds to industry surplus is 195%; at year-end 2019 it was 199%.

Outside of all bonds, the industry’s second largest investment class would be commercial mortgage loans, which were roughly 13% of the industry’s invested assets at the end of 2019. In both cases, the industry is entering into this type of environment in a better position leverage-wise than during the last crisis.

What’s unique about this crisis, in terms of potentially mitigating impacts to the asset side of the life insurance industry’s balance sheet, is that the government has pledged to build, rapidly, what we call a “liquidity bridge” over the crisis. Massive government monetary and fiscal intervention will hopefully help to minimize economic damage from the current crisis, which could otherwise produce sizeable investment losses. We hope that this economic crisis will be temporary, whatever that means.

RIJ: But what if this financial crisis gets worse?

Paul: If those bonds are downgraded to below investment grade, the amount of risk-based capital that insurance companies are required to hold against those securities will ramp up quickly. If the ratings go to double-B or triple-C, the capital requirements jump. That’s a reality that insurers may have to deal with. We call those bonds “fallen angels.” The reported value of bonds under statutory accounting does not change with interest rate movements, because companies don’t have to mark them to market as they do under GAAP [General Accepted Accounting Principles]. If they hold the downgraded bond to maturity, and it doesn’t default, then it won’t affect the balance sheet. You certainly wish in the current stressed environment that the insurance carriers weren’t so loaded up with triple-Bs, but they needed more investment spread over the past decade as portfolio yields came under pressure. Otherwise their products would have been much less attractive.

RIJ: On the plus side, some bonds must be bargains right now.

Paul: When we think of low rates, we’re used to thinking of the 10-year Treasury, now with a yield of 0.6%, as a proxy for overall bond yields. But the relative credit spread on corporate fixed income and other non-government debt has actually expanded recently. People were fearful and sold off bonds. We’ve heard life executives say that their portfolio yield will actually improve if they can buy these bonds at depressed prices. Ironically, if you’re willing to buy triple-Bs now, and you think you minimize excessive exposure to credit losses, you can get more yield and potentially make your products more attractive.

RIJ: OK, we’ve touched on the asset side of the balance sheet. What’s happening on the liability side?

Paul: On the liability side of the balance sheet, it’s possible that reserve liabilities will need to be strengthened during a financial crisis. The math is simple: If liabilities go up, the surplus goes down. If you’re looking at where liabilities might be hit, here’s an example. When companies are pricing products, whether it’s life insurance, disability, or long-term care insurance—any of these long-tail products—they base that pricing in part on what they think their investment returns will be over time.

As the yields on all types of investments decline, the carriers have to recalibrate how much investment income they think they’ll earn in the future. If that number goes down, they may have to build up existing reserves to reflect that. And this will pressure surplus. Or when the lifetime income guarantees on variable annuities go “into the money,” the liabilities may go up. That also puts pressure on surplus positions.

RIJ: So, if I understand it correctly, the surplus can be threatened if, for whatever reason, the assets lose value or the liabilities get bigger.

Paul: Yes, both sides of the balance sheet can be hit. That’s where the pressure comes from. The problems are traditionally more on the asset side. But the Federal Reserve is throwing its full weight at that current problem, and companies that might otherwise quickly get caught in a liquidity crunch will hopefully not be. Afterwards, if the equity markets or investment yields improve, we’ll see existing reserves potentially “taken down,” which will help surplus positions.

RIJ: We’re also seeing a sales drop in annuity products. That has to hurt too.

Paul: We’ll definitely see a revenue hit. With social distancing, it’s tough to distribute products when you can’t physically get in front of people. It’s also more challenging to sell products to people in an environment where they’re pulling in their horns and husbanding cash. Two weeks ago, even Treasuries were being sold.

On the other hand, a good annuity or life insurance salesman will tell clients, ‘This crisis is an example of why you need guarantees.” Whole life insurance has no equity market risk, it pays a dividend, and it builds up cash value that you can use at times like this. People are getting the message. One distributor said that people who were jumping out of variable annuity contracts a couple of weeks ago are now telling their advisers that they want to get back into them. That’s the kind of behavior you see in a panic.

RIJ: Any other potential points of pain?

Paul: There will be losses. Disability claims will tick up; people who lose their jobs will decide to claim disability benefits. Companies are generally still paying their salaries; they don’t want to lose talent, so revenue is down but expenses remain. So you’ll see lower income or operating losses. Operating losses, all things equal, will depress surplus positions. This crisis wasn’t driven by a recession, so if we can get through the current health crisis in a relatively rapid manner—a big if—it doesn’t have to create long-term economic havoc.

RIJ: Even though equity indexes have rebounded from their recent lows, life insurance holding company stocks are still far below their recent peaks. Is that a source of concern for you or your clients?

Paul: ALIRT doesn’t react to the stock prices of holding companies. As we remind our clients, insureds are not legally exposed to the holding company but rather to the legal entity that actually underwrites their policies. And these legal-entity insurers are closely regulated by state insurance departments. In this stressed environment, state regulators will make sure that life insurers aren’t paying out excessive amounts of money to holding companies, as their primary concern is the solvency of these insurers.

But when the holding companies are impacted and they’re putting out fires, they can become distracted. The idea of pulling in horns becomes likelier. If the parent feels that the investment community doesn’t like the risks it is underwriting, its life insurer subsidiaries might become more conservative in the types of policies they issue.

RIJ: Publicly traded companies in this industry have bought back billions of dollars worth of their own shares in recent years. That might make Wall Street analysts and shareholders happy, but it worries some consumer advocates. Some of the money for buybacks comes out of the life insurance subsidiaries, I would guess.

Paul: We watch the amount of dividends paid out by insurance companies, especially to publicly traded parents. If holding companies become more leveraged over time—that is, they take on more debt—their life insurer subsidiaries may be called on to pay more dividends to the parent to support that debt. This can serve to constrain an insurer’s surplus position, potentially making it more leveraged versus its peers.

Certain life insurers have also been paying out money to their publicly traded parents—not because those parent necessarily needs money to service debt payments, but because they’re buying back their stock and/or paying out dividends to shareholders. Whatever the reason, surplus funds that are up-streamed to parent organizations can cause an insurer to become more leveraged and therefore potentially more financially constrained.

RIJ: Excuse my naïveté, but are you saying that the parents might be issuing debt even as the life insurance subsidiary is buying debt?

Paul: For a company to ramp up a new product, it has to hire actuarial talent and managerial talent, pay commissions to producers, and pay for the infrastructure required to produce and service the product. And if you’re a CEO, and you have a lot of stock options, and you feel a fiduciary duty to your shareholders, you’ll want to help the stock price. It’s in the nature of a public company to do that.

RIJ: Even though large life insurance companies rarely go bankrupt, consumers who buy their annuities and other long-dated products often worry about that happening. If we go into a sustained recession, will the potential for failure increase?

Paul: It’s really hard to put a life company out of business because it’s hard for them to experience a “run on the bank.” There’s a real stickiness to life insurance products. Life and disability and long-term care products tend to be held for a long time. Even with shorter-tail annuity products you have surrender charges that serve to protect the insurer.

To have an It’s a Wonderful Life-style run on the an insurance company, a lot of individuals would have to decide to get out of products at the same time, which is unrealistic. So, to answer your question, we don’t look at this crisis as provoking a liquidity crunch that turns into a balance sheet issue. At this point, it’s really an income statement/cash flow issue. Insurance companies may have several quarters of operating losses, but this should not necessarily threaten their balance sheets. If this crisis is short term, it shouldn’t turn into that at all.

RIJ: Thank you, David

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

News from RIJ subscriber firms

Corporate pension funded status rises in March: Milliman

The funded status of the 100 largest corporate defined benefit pension plans rose by $93 billion during March as measured by the Milliman 100 Pension Funding Index (PFI).

The funded status deficit improved to $255 billion at the end of March
2020 due to a record increase in the benchmark corporate bond interest rates used to value pension liabilities. This funded status gain was partially offset by the precipitous decline in investment returns during March. As the decline in pension liabilities outweighed the decline in pension assets, the March 31 funded ratio increased to 85.6%, up from 82.1% at the end of February.

The market value of assets fell by $85 billion as a result of March’s sharp market decline. The Milliman 100 PFI asset value decreased to $1.516 trillion from $1.601 trillion at the end of February based on a monthly return of -5.08%. Only five other months in the last two decades have posted more severe investment losses, the last occurring in October of 2008 during the Great Recession. By comparison, the 2019 Milliman Pension Funding Study reported that the monthly median expected investment return during 2018 was 0.53% (6.6% annualized). The expected rate of return for 2019 will be updated in the 2020 Milliman Pension Funding Study, due out later this month.

The projected benefit obligation (PBO), or pension liabilities, decreased to $1.771 trillion at the end of March. The change resulted from an increase of 70 basis points in the monthly discount rate, to 3.39% for March from 2.69% for February 2020.

CARES Act will help insurers: AM Best

The recently passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act will provide U.S. insurance companies tax relief in the event of operating losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, according to an estimate from AM Best, the ratings agency.

A new Best’s Commentary, “COVID-19 Stimulus Package to Benefit Insurers,” notes that the $2 trillion CARES Act provides a special rule applicable for all companies’ net operating losses in 2018 to year-end 2020, allowing these to be carried back to each of the five tax years prior to the year of loss, which could help all insurance segments.

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed in late 2017, had repealed all net operating loss carrybacks for life companies, while preserving the net operating loss provisions for property/casualty companies. Allowing insurers to carry net operating losses to years prior to the effective date of the TCJA gives them the ability to use the 35% tax rate that was in effect then, thereby increasing tax credits.

The removal of carryback provisions in the TCJA also had forced life/annuity writers to reduce the amount of admitted deferred tax assets. With the modified carryback provisions, net admitted assets may increase at least over the period up to year-end 2020.

The CARES Act also allows companies to file for accelerated alternate minimum tax (AMT) credits, which could be a backstop in the event of a surge in health claims during the pandemic. A number of non-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield companies enjoyed significant windfalls from the TCJA due to the elimination of the AMT. This combined with the reduced tax rate resulted in significant surplus increases in 2017 and 2018.

These companies are in a very strong capital position owing to the AMT credits, but decisions to file for accelerated credits will depend on tax strategies employed as the pandemic evolves.

Plan participants are curious about income options: Allianz Life

More than three-quarters (77%) of current participants in employer-sponsored plans would consider adding a guaranteed lifetime income option to their plans, and 59% would consider adding an annuity, according to new research from Allianz Life.

About six in 10 (61%) of respondents to an Allianz Life survey say they want more information on how annuities can be part of their plan. At the same time, 60% of those surveyed are not sure of the benefits of having an annuity in their plan.

“The next step will be to provide [participants] with relevant information so that they are able to make an informed decision as to which potential options are a fit for their given situation. Ongoing volatility will only serve to increase the urgency surrounding this need,” said Matt Gray, assistant vice president of Worksite Solutions, Allianz Life, in a release.

DPL offers two more Great American Life indexed annuities

DPL Financial Partners (“DPL”), a platform where registered investment advisors (“RIAs”) can access insurance products, will add two more commission-free annuity contracts from Great American Life Insurance Company to RIA member firms.

Great American’s Index Protector 4 and Index Protector 5 MVA (market value adjustment) fixed-indexed annuities are available now at DPL. They feature shorter surrender periods than the Index Protector 7, which DPL already offers.

The addition of Great American’s Index Protector 4 and Index Protector 5 MVA fixed-indexed annuities brings the number of commission-free annuity and life products available to DPL members to well over 30 products.

MassMutual puts CARES Act into action

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) will begin implementing new provisions available under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act this week, the company announced.

To start, MassMutual is offering several new provisions enabled by the CARES Act for its 32,000 retirement plan sponsors to offer employees enrolled in a MassMutual retirement plan, which reflects 3 million participants. Plan sponsors can ‘opt-in’ to offer:

  • A suspension of required minimum distributions for 2020
  • A temporary increase of up to $100,000 for loans and an extension of up to one year for loan repayment
  • A penalty-free COVID-19-related distribution capped at $100,000 with no mandatory tax withholding requirements and the ability to repay distributions

MassMutual is also waiving fees associated with eligible retirement plan hardship distributions, loan initiations, and withdrawals under the CARES Act until further notice. MassMutual will also continue to pay third-party administrators’ portions of these fees.

Principal offers relief for plan sponsors and participants

In accord with the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), Principal and Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement & Trust (IRT) said they will waive participant-paid distribution and loan origination fees for participants taking tax-favored withdrawals, hardship withdrawals, or loans from their employer-sponsored retirement accounts.

Additionally, retirement plan sponsors will have fees waived for plan amendment changes to allow participants to access these programs, or who need to reduce or remove their employer contributions1.

To help Principal insurance policyholders—individuals and employers—prevent a lapse in coverage, grace periods for premium payments have been extended. For employers who hold group benefits coverage the company is temporarily halting any rate increases.

This measure is for employers with fewer than 500 employees with policy renewal dates coming due between May 1 and August 15 of this year. Policyholders and others can visit the dedicated Principal COVID-19 resource page for more information related to insurance coverage.

Principal is also leveraging recent investments in digital services to continue meeting customer needs during this time of disruption. When underwriting life and disability policies, the company is using digital health data and records where possible, instead of requiring physicians’ statements and labs.

For dental insurance customers, Principal will cover expenses related to teledentistry (exam fees were already covered) and ensure they will not count towards annual frequency limits.

Envestnet | MoneyGuide offers new tax planning feature

Envestnet | MoneyGuide has launched a new Tax Planning feature that will enable advisors to have deeper conversations with clients regarding different strategies and show via interactive graphics and illustrations the potential impact of each across personalized retirement plans. Since the SECURE Act recently became law, advisors say clients have more questions than ever about rules related to required minimum distributions (RMDs) for certain retirement accounts and how the new law could impact their own financial plan.

Advisors are also finding that clients have some common misconceptions about paying taxes in retirement, as pre-retirees often assume they will automatically pay less to Uncle Sam during their golden years. However, today the opposite is more likely.

The new Tax Planning feature quantifies the expected savings and illustrates the potential impact of implementing different strategies in the plan, thereby helping reduce a client’s tax burden during retirement.

Based on the client’s goal, advisors can calculate a Roth Conversion, Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) and Qualified Distributions, to test the strategies, and see the impact on the client’s probability of success and overall tax savings.

Some examples of what this new feature can help advisors show clients:

Roth Conversion: Show how converting a Traditional IRA or an Employer Retirement Plan to Roth Assets impacts your tax burden and the assets left to heirs. Based on the clients’ projected taxable income during retirement, auto-calculate the amount to convert that maximizes the use of a selected tax bracket.

Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCDs): Show the impact on lifetime tax savings of gifting up to $100,000 of Qualified Retirement Assets directly to charities. Establish the amount to gift based on the client’s projected Required Minimum Distribution.

Qualified Distribution: Show the impact of taking distributions from Traditional IRA or an Employer Retirement Plan early in retirement rather than waiting until RMDs begin. Based on the clients’ projected taxable income during retirement, instantly determine the amount that maximizes the distribution in years where there is lower taxable income.

These strategies are available in MoneyGuidePro as Goal Strategies on the What If Worksheet. Interactive visual models to demonstrate these strategies in the plan are available in MoneyGuideElite, according to the release.

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Life insurers hurt themselves, reader says

Dear RIJ editor:

Thank you for your excellent April 2 article, “The ‘Fed Put’ Hurts Annuities—and Retirees”) While I understand that it may be tempting to blame Trump, and perhaps Powell caved, in reality the plight of life insurers is due more to what’s been a decades-long inability or unwillingness on the part of that industry to communicate its inherent (and unmatchable) advantages.

It’s hard to imagine a multi-trillion dollar industry that has done more to neuter its own influence over national economic policy.

Early in my career, insurers largely controlled the business of pensions. But what happened? The insurers ceded that business and much of their influence to the asset managers, an industry that was infinitely better at “selling” its story.

Aside from the fact that, decades ago, workers weren’t given a balanced explanation of the trade-offs between traditional pensions and 401(k) plans, how else can one explain the mass-transfer of risk from insurers’ balance sheets to retirees’ personal balance sheets?

How did we go from a retirement security paradigm that featured quantifiable, guaranteed retirement income to one that guarantees no retirement income at all?

Blame the insurance industry itself for losing its preeminence. Blame its many years of pushing opaque and overly complicated products. Blame the annuity compensation structures that gave rise to and then institutionalized low agent productivity. Blame ineffective client-facing communications. Blame many years of insurer management teams looking the other way in the face of distributors’ poor market conduct.

This is how you give rise to a Ken Fisher who absurdly proclaims, “I Hate Annuities and You should Too!” Not for a moment, I’d wager, would Fisher let his home(s) go uninsured. Nor drive to work without insuring his car. Yet he proudly condemns what virtually no retiree should fail to secure: income insurance. Blame not Fisher—or Trump. Blame an industry that never learned how to communicate its value.

David Macchia, MBA, RMA

Founder & CEO

Wealth2k, Inc.

COVID-19’s Financial Impact on Older Americans

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the finances of older Americans in a variety of ways. The effect depends partly on whether they are retired, working, or recently unemployed. It also depends on the sector of the economy they work in, the level of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits they receive, and the speed with which the benefits are disbursed by their state.

On the plus side, older workers will be less hard hit than the young. Older Americans are more likely to hold public service jobs, and this sector will probably be less badly affected. Workers in the leisure and hospitality industries (restaurants, bars, etc.) have been especially hard hit. The median age in this sector is only 32 years compared with the economy-wide average of 42 years. Gig workers in general tend to be young, and they are suffering more than most.

Whatever their age, low-paid workers will see a higher share of their income replaced by UI benefits, which the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act—the 2.3 trillion-dollar stimulus law signed last week by the President—has increased by $600 per week for 13 weeks.

Nonetheless, American households headed by those near retirement (aged 55-64 year old) still depend for almost all of their income on the labor market. Their labor force participation rate is high and their unemployment rate low in normal times, but even in normal times the loss of a job for this age group usually leads to a long period of unemployment. A subsequent job is often paid less, and comes without health benefits.

A question that arises is whether a long period of extraordinarily low economic activity in the wake of the pandemic will lead to a permanent exit of older workers from the labor market. If so, the hardship they experience would be considerable. The debt burden of this age group is already substantially higher than it was in the early 1990s, although declines in interest rates may have at least partially offset the burden of servicing that debt.

Responses to a drop in cash flow

Social Security. Americans who have reached age 62 can claim Social Security retirement benefits, but this means that they will forego the substantial increase in the benefit that results from delaying a claim to their normal retirement age or even later. Those who can keep working and delay claiming Social Security probably should.

Dividend stocks. Most American households, even older households, do not hold a substantial share of their assets in stocks or bonds. According to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, even the top 10% of households by income with a head aged 55 to 64 held on average just nine percent of their total assets—which include a household’s principal residence and other real property—in directly and indirectly held stocks in 2016. For the 65-74 age group, the share in stocks was twelve percent.

However, the clients of financial advisors who subscribe to the RIJ are undoubtedly well up in the top 10% of income, and the share of stocks in their total assets would be much higher. Many have already suffered a substantial decline in the value of their assets, and they face some difficult decisions.

For older Americans still enjoying a steady income, the undoubtedly strong temptation to liquidate the share of their portfolio in stocks or stock mutual funds should probably be resisted, although the decision to do so obviously depends on the individual circumstances of the households affected. The key question investors need to ask is whether they could survive financially if the stock market did not recover strongly.

To judge from the experience of the Great Recession, the stock market will eventually recover. That said, we are living in extraordinarily uncertain times, and the often seismic day-to-day swings in the market are unnerving. Shifting stock holdings from growth stocks to stocks emphasizing income might be worth considering to avoid the need to sell stocks to finance current expenditure.

Retirement plan savings. For older Americans who have lost their jobs, emergency withdrawals from their 401(k), IRAs and other retirement accounts will probably be necessary, but these need to be kept to a minimum. For those households that have managed to accumulate at least a moderate balance in their retirement plans and are nearing retirement age, withdrawals can be seen as a bridging strategy until the Social Security benefit kicks in.

Some employer-provided 401(k) plans offer plan participants either phased withdrawals or annuities in addition to lump-sum withdrawals. Choosing between a lump-sum withdrawal and an annuity is never an easy decision. Human beings, being human, tend to underestimate the value of a future income stream relative to a lump sum paid today, and this tendency is probably exacerbated in uncertain times. The decision to take a lump sum over a future stream of income is probably best made with the help of a financial advisor.

Reverse mortgages. Taking out a conventional mortgage is another strategy for homeowners with sufficient equity in their properties. A reverse mortgage (RM), or a reverse-mortgage line of credit, are other possibilities, since they do not have to be paid back until the death of the mortgagor or the sale of the property. RMs have not proved popular, but these strategies may be relevant for some of the clients of RIJ subscribers.

The future

Even if labor market participation rates recover, a long period of unemployment could seriously jeopardize this group’s retirement prospects, quite apart from the impact of the pandemic on the value of their assets. The years from 55 to 64 should normally be the ones where retirement assets are being built up. Mortgages are being paid down, and other financial obligations, like financing the education of dependents, should be declining. (That said, older households have recently been incurring substantial direct debt to finance their children’s education.)

Looking to what we must hope will be a brighter future, Americans households of all ages need at least to begin to save more. The strategy of living for paycheck to paycheck has now been revealed as fatally unwise and short-sighted. No one could have self-insured against the pandemic, but many households could have been better prepared to weather its effects.

We must pray that we are never again assailed by a time as trying to the soul as this one, but pandemics and financial crises have occurred and reoccurred throughout history. Think of the biblical account of Ancient Egypt, and the cycle of lean and fat years. That story has never really gone out of date.

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

 

The Shape-Shifting ‘Equity Risk Premium’

We’re all familiar with a “premium” grade of gasoline. It’s supposed to contain more of a type of octane (C8H18) than lower grades of gas. That’s why it costs about a third more than “regular.” But does premium gas contain enough extra octane to justify its price? Hard to say.

Assigning a value to the “equity risk premium” is even harder. If you stopped ten people on the street—if it were hygienic to do that today—it’s unlikely that more than one of them, and possibly none, could tell you what that term means.

Yet millions of people who participate in employer-sponsored retirement plans regularly buy stocks (via mutual funds) without knowing which they’re doing: paying a premium for risking their money in stocks or receiving a premium for taking that risk.

It’s a timely question. Over the month of March 2020, the stock market’s equity risk premium grew and shrank dramatically. Before deciding how to respond, savers, investors, and speculators need to refresh their acquaintance with this financial market term of art.

ERP (Excuse me!)

Let’s unpack the phrase “equity risk premium,” word by word. “Equity” refers to common stocks. Most people know that. But how many understand what risk means, or how to measure it? If they’ve read “Against the Gods,” Peter Bernstein’s famous book on risk, they might.

The website of John Wiley & Sons, the publisher of financial books, defines the equity risk premium (or ERP) as the “extra return (over the expected yield on risk-free 10-year Treasury bonds) that investors expect to receive” in the long run by investing in a diversified basket of U.S. stocks—perhaps by buying shares in an S&P500 Index Fund.

On average, since the Great Depression, stocks have delivered an attractive average risk premium. That’s why people buy them and hold them for a long time, even though stocks are riskier (more prone to price fluctuations in the short run) than bonds.

But how big is your ERP? Over the past 100 years or so, the average ERP has been about 5%. But averages mean nothing to individuals. At any given time or for any given investor, the ERP depends on many factors: On whether stocks are cheap or expensive today (relative to corporate earnings); on the dividend that stocks yield; on the difference between what you paid for the stocks and their price today; on the inflation rate; on the current 10-year Treasury yield; on whether you’re talking about the performance of one stock or of 30 stocks or all the stocks in the equity universe, or some quantity in between.

In short, the ERP fluctuates—from time to time, investment to investment, and investor to investor. Somewhat counter-intuitively, it shrinks when stock prices rise (because their future growth potential shrinks) and grows when stock prices fall (when stocks are “on sale”). It shrinks when 10-year Treasury bond yields are high (because then you can get a pretty good return without taking any long-term risk at all) and grows when the Fed (the Federal Open Market Committee, to be exact) lowers the risk-free rate, which can lower the 10-year Treasury rate (as it did in March).

You can’t take the ERP for granted. Yet that’s what most investors do. “It is widely believed that while stocks are risky in the short run, in the long run they are sure to outperform risk-free investments like government bonds,” pension expert Zvi Bodie of Boston University wrote recently. “This is a dangerous fallacy… It leads to the illusion that one can earn an equity risk premium without bearing risk.”

The Federal Reserve sometimes indulges that fallacy. It’s been shown that investors will pay more and more for stocks if they believe that, even if stock prices go too high (run out of ERP), the Federal Reserve Board will come to the rescue. The Fed does this by lowering rates when stocks fall, which restores ERP by expanding it from the bottom. That makes bonds less competitive, which stimulates demand for stocks, which drives up prices, which starts to cancel out the new ERP.

That’s what happened when the S&P500 Index dropped by 17.5% in the fourth quarter of 2018. Taking note, the Fed halted its policy (at the time) of slowly raising the Fed funds rate. Then, in the second half of 2019, the Fed lowered the rate three times. Welcoming the fresh injection of ERP, investors started buying stocks again. Over the 14-month period that ended in March 2020, they drove the S&P500 Index up by 33%.

As two business school professors described this chain of events in a recent article, “Mean-reversion in stock returns is driven by a reduction in the equity risk premium [i.e., a rise in stock prices] via the Fed’s promise of accommodation should the economy deteriorate.”

ZIRP (Excuse me!)

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Investors sold stocks in the fear that a recession would soon arrive and reduce corporate profits. The S&P500 Index was down 35% at one point in March. Paradoxically, the collapse of stock prices put a ton of ERP back into stocks, making them more attractive. The Fed added even more ERP by lowering the Fed funds rate twice, to zero, in March. Investors cautiously returned to the market, and stocks rebounded a bit.

But now the Fed is employing “ZIRP,” aka Zero Interest Rate Policy. The Fed can’t lower interest rates any further. For that reason, you’ll hear TV pundits say that the Fed is “out of ammunition.” (The Fed can still affect rates by buying bonds, but that’s another story.) Stocks may have to drop even farther before the ERP rises enough to inspire broad and consistent demand for stocks again.

What should the average investor do now? You should think seriously about buying stocks. They’re on sale. (A mutual fund executive once said, “If you liked a stock at $100, you should love it at $85.”) But your own unique circumstances should drive your decision.

Let’s assume that the U.S. government’s multi-trillion dollar stimulus bills will prevent a full-blown depression and that average stock prices won’t fall any farther than they already have.

If you’re under 45, you should put most of your new savings into stock mutual funds. If you’re middle-aged, you might take a more conservative approach: Consider selling enough bonds and buying enough stocks to “rebalance” your portfolio back to your pre-crash stock-to-bond ratio.

If you’re near or in retirement, don’t sell depressed stocks if you can avoid it. If you don’t already have a pension, consider creating a personal pension by selling your bonds and buying an income annuity that provides a guaranteed monthly income for life. That’ll put gas in your tank.

Industry News

 Jackson National to offer LifeYield software to advisers

Jackson National Life Insurance Company will integrate LifeYield LLC’s cloud-based tool for tax-efficient management of investors’ portfolio into Jackson’s existing digital tool set for advisers who work the insurer, the two companies announced this week.

Financial professionals who work with Jackson will be able to use LifeYield’s powerful technology suite “to quantify the potential benefits of incorporating annuity products in client portfolios,” according to a release. Jackson is the largest issuer of annuities in the U.S., as of December 31, 2019.

LifeYield, creators of the Taxficient Score, enables financial advisors to deliver tax-smart, household-level portfolio solutions. LifeYield’s Proposal Advantage Suite provides a comprehensive, tax-aware view of a client’s entire portfolio–analyzing assets across IRAs, 401(k)s and taxable accounts.

Public companies need to be transparent about COVID-19 impact

The staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has urged public companies to make thorough disclosures about business risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic, offering a sketch of the many ways the intensifying crisis could impact firms and shareholders, Law360: Securities reported.

The SEC Division of Corporate Finance on Wednesday offered detailed guidance on how companies should assess and communicate COVID-19 risks, encouraging firms to be proactive and revise their filings accordingly. The move accompanied a second extension of filing deadlines by the agency as it continues to adjust its rules to unprecedented times.

Agency staff encouraged timely reporting but recognized that the coronavirus, which has now infected more than 523,000 across the world and upended the global economy, poses widespread risks that are difficult to predict with precision.

The SEC put companies on notice that COVID-19 was likely to become a focal point in future disclosures when the agency first extended filing deadlines earlier this month. The new guidance elaborates on this point, laying out scores of questions companies should be asking as they assess the impact of the coronavirus on everything from liquidity to supply chains to access to credit.
Agency staff encouraged companies to think long-term about how the current economic outlook could affect their financial stability, asset values and future consumer demand for their products. But the guidance also encouraged a granular analysis of how things like remote working could impact internal controls and business continuity plans.

Laura Richman, a corporate and securities attorney at Mayer Brown LLP, told Law360 Thursday that firms should heed the new disclosure guidance and start assessing COVID-19 risk from top to bottom.
Stock markets have been on a rollercoaster ride since the coronavirus, once largely isolated to China, became a global pandemic that shook the trajectory of the global economy and dramatically altered the way hundreds of millions of people live and work. The SEC has responded by relaxing filing deadlines and offering other forms of targeted relief to public companies, shareholders and investment shops.

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said at a Thursday meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council that the agency’s measures have so far helped stabilize markets despite unprecedented volatility.

AM Best sets up coronavirus web page

AM Best has launched dedicated access to its analytical updates on the COVID-19 virus outbreak. This web page (www.ambest.com/about/coronavirus.html) will be updated regularly with insurance industry-specific commentary related to the ongoing pandemic and video discussions with members of AM Best’s analytic teams about the unfolding situation.

To date, AM Best has issued 10 announcements since late January on the wide-ranging impact of the coronavirus outbreak, most with accompanying video discussions. Below are summaries of announcements released so far in March 2020. Reports and videos released before March considered potential impacts in China and Southeast Asia, as well as a look at pandemic stress testing typically undertaken by insurers.

  • Health Insurers Adjust as COVID-19 Spreads in United States (March 19, 2020): The risks to U.S. health insurers from the COVID-19 outbreak continue to expand in scope and complexity on the claims management, economic and operational fronts. See the Best’s Commentaryand related video.
  • Japanese Insurers Continue to Grapple With Global Market Volatility (March 19, 2020): Insurers in Japan remain financially stable to weather ongoing market volatility brought about by the COVID-19 virus outbreak and the sharp decline in oil prices due to their robust balance sheet fundamentals. See the Best’s Commentary.
  • AM Best to Deploy Pandemic-Related Stress Test for Rated Insurance Companies (March 18, 2020): AM Best is developing stress testing that it will conduct on its rated insurance companies’ balance sheets to gauge the impact of the COVID-19 virus fallout on their risk-adjusted capital levels, investment portfolios, reserve adequacy and other aspects of the risks borne by rated entities. See the related press releaseand related video.
  • AM Best Revises U.S. Life/Annuity Market Outlook to Negative (March 16, 2020): Due to the significant volatility and uncertainty created by the COVID-19 virus, AM Best has revised its outlook on the U.S. life/annuity segment to negative. See the Best’s Market Segment Reportand related video.
  • European Insurers Well-Positioned to Manage Potential Exposure to Pandemic Risk (March 8, 2020): The biggest impact to European insurers out of the COVID-19 outbreak likely will result from the economic fallout, as governments and markets react to the virus’ rapid spread, rather than from direct coronavirus exposures. See the Best’s Commentary.
  • S. Health Insurers Face Potential Rise in Claims Due to Coronavirus (March 6, 2020): This commentary looks at to what extent U.S. health insurers can expect increases in coronavirus-related medical claims, with costs to be driven by at-risk patients such as the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. See the Best’s Commentaryand related video.
  • Further Global Interest Rate Cuts Anticipated as Economic Buffer for Coronavirus Impact (March 4, 2020): The initial move by the Federal Reserve to cut its federal funds rate came as a surprise. AM Best expects further accommodative monetary policy actions to continue throughout 2020. See the Best’s Commentary.
Americans are worried but calm: Allianz Life

The latest Quarterly Market Perceptions Study from Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz Life finds Americans are worried, but trying to take a calm approach to investing for retirement.

Market crash and recession fears increased significantly from the end of 2019 when worries were at their lowest levels in over a year and half. Now, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) express concerns about a recession (compared with 43% in Q4 2019). In addition, 57% think that the market hasn’t bottomed out yet.

Despite increased anxiety over market swings, over half (52%) of Americans understand that it’s good time to stay neutral and not take any action because of market conditions.

Consumers have experienced many ups and downs in the market recently, and the number of people who say they are too nervous to invest reflects that, as percentages fluctuate from quarter to quarter. Currently, 41% of consumers say they are too nervous to invest in the market (compared with 35% in Q4 2019).

Interestingly, Americans still seem optimistic about their ability to recover retirement savings after a market decline. Nearly 70% believe that, even if the market continues to decline, they will have time to rebuild their retirement savings.

SIMON and Insurance Technologies team up

SIMON (SIMON Markets LLC and SIMON Annuities and Insurance Services LLC) is partnering with Insurance Technologies, LLC, a provider of sales and regulatory automation solutions for the insurance and financial services industries, according to a release.

The partnership allows SIMON to “turn manual and time intensive workflows into a simplified process, centralized in one location,” the release said. SIMON platform offers advisers an end-to-end toolset, including on-demand education, a digital marketplace, real-time analytics, and lifecycle management.

Advisers see opportunity in health care stocks: E*Trade

E*TRADE Advisor Services, a provider of integrated technology, custody, and practice management support for registered investment advisors (RIAs), released the latest iteration of its Independent Advisor Tracking study, which covers advisor views on the market, the industry, their business, and clients.

Volatility management skyrockets. More than four out of five advisors (85%) are actively managing against market volatility—shooting up 20 percentage points this quarter. More than half (55%) are managing against a recession, shifting up eight percentage points from December.

Clients aligned on volatility concerns. Clients are contacting their advisors most about volatility (53%) and the coronavirus (38%), in stark comparison to December, when clients most asked about the threat of recession (28%), and the ongoing trade tensions (21%).

Advisors see opportunity in health care investments. Health care (22%) is the number one sector where advisors see potential, moving up six percentage points since the end of the year.

Clients are increasingly trying to time the market. The top mistake advisors see their clients make is attempting to time the market (45%), ticking up seven percentage points since December.

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

FYI: Legal alerts from the Wagner Law Group

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act

(Updated to Include Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act Provisions) April 1, 2020

This Law Alert serves as an update to the Law Alert sent out on March 19, 2020 concerning the paid leave and group health plan provisions of The Families First Coronavirus Response Act. Effective April 1, 2020, the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act (the “Sick Leave Act”) and the Emergency Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act (the “FMLA Expansion Act”), two of the divisions of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (the “Families First Act”), as amended by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the “CARES Act”), provide paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave to employees affected by the coronavirus. They also provide tax credits for eligible employers. These provisions expire on December 31, 2020.

The Families First Act also requires, effective as of March 18, 2020, and continuing for the duration of the federal declared emergency (the “Emergency”), that group health plans and health insurance issuers offering group insurance coverage, including grandfathered health plans under the Affordable Care Act, provide coverage of testing and diagnosis for COVID-19 without any cost-sharing requirements. Also, until 2021, the CARES Act permits pre-deductible coverage of telehealth and other remote care. The CARES Act also requires, permanently, that group health plans and health insurance issuers (including grandfathered plans) cover COVID-19 vaccines (once there are any such vaccines), and permanently permits over-the-counter drugs to be reimbursed by HSAs, FSAs, HRAs, and Archer MSAs, whether or not they were prescribed by a physician.

Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act

Employers with fewer than 500 employees and government employers must provide employees with paid sick leave. While the Sick Leave Act does not address the issue, the DOL has indicated that all employees of the employer are taken into account – full-time, part-time, temporary, seasonal, and union. Each separate employer entity is a separate employer for purposes of the 500-employee threshold, except that two or more employer entities may qualify as the “joint employer” of a group of employees, or all the entities in a controlled group may qualify as an “integrated employer” if the parent has de facto control over the operations of all. Employees may take paid sick leave if the employee:

  • is subject to a federal, state or local quarantine or isolation order;
  • has been advised by a healthcare provider to self-quarantine;
  • is experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 and is seeking a medical diagnosis;
  • is caring for an individual who is subject to a federal, state, or local quarantine or isolation order, or has been advised to self-quarantine by a healthcare provider;
  • is caring for a son or daughter whose school or day care has been closed or the regular child care provider is not available due to coronavirus; or
  • is experiencing any other substantially similar condition specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

A big exception: healthcare providers and emergency responders are not required to provide paid sick leave to employees.

At present, employees, who are laid off before the paid sick leave requirements go into effect, will not be eligible for paid sick leave. Employees placed on furlough on or after April 1,2020, are also ineligible. If an employer closes a worksite on or after April 1, 2020, paid leave will also be unavailable.

The Department of Labor (the “DOL”) has the authority to exempt small businesses with fewer than 50 employees if the imposition of the paid sick leave requirements would jeopardize the viability of the business as a going concern.

Paid sick leave must be available to all employees of employers subject to the Sick Leave Act (those with fewer than 500 employees), regardless of their date of hire. An employer may not require, as a condition of providing sick leave, that an employee search for and find a replacement employee to cover the hours during which the employee is using the paid sick leave.

Employers who maintain a paid sick leave policy must provide the emergency paid sick leave in addition to their current paid sick leave, and may not require employees to use other forms of paid leave (e.g., vacation leave) instead of the emergency paid sick leave.

Paid sick leave must be paid at the employee’s regular rate of pay if it is used because the employee is being quarantined, has been advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine, or is experiencing symptoms of coronavirus and is seeking a medical diagnosis. Such paid sick leave shall not exceed $511 per day, or $5,110 in the aggregate, for any employee.

Employers must pay two-thirds of the employee’s regular rate of pay if the employee is on leave to care for an individual under quarantine, to care for a son or daughter whose school or day care has closed or the child care provider is unavailable due to coronavirus, or any other circumstance certified by the Secretary of HHS in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Labor. Such paid sick leave shall not exceed $200 per day, or $2,000 in the aggregate, for any employee.

Full-time employees are entitled to 2 weeks (80 hours) of qualified paid sick leave and part-time employees are entitled to the typical number of hours that they work during a typical 2-week period. There is no carryover of this paid sick leave from one year to the next. Paid sick leave ends on the first day of the employee’s next scheduled shift immediately following the termination of the need for paid sick leave. The Sick Leave Act also contains an antiretaliation provision, and further provides that an employer who fails to comply will be treated as having committed a minimum wage violation under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Employers that contribute to multiemployer plans may fulfill their obligations under the Sick Leave Act (if consistent with the collective bargaining agreement) by making contributions to the multiemployer plan based on the paid leave that each of its employees is entitled to receive under the collective bargaining agreement.

Employees who work under a collective bargaining agreement may secure pay from the fund, plan or program based on the hours they have worked under the collective bargaining agreement.

For employers that are required to provide the paid leave, there is a silver lining. Employers are entitled to a refundable payroll tax credit equal to 100% of qualified paid sick leave wages paid by an employer for each calendar quarter, up to specified caps:

For purposes of the tax credit, the amount of qualified paid sick leave taken into account for each employee who is under quarantine, has been advised to self-quarantine, or is experiencing symptoms and seeking a diagnosis, is capped at $511 per day.

For amounts paid to employees caring for an individual under quarantine, or for a child whose school or day care center has closed or whose child care provider is unavailable due to coronavirus, or who has experienced other circumstances certified by the Secretary of the Treasury, the credit is capped at $200 per day.

The aggregate number of days taken into account for a calendar quarter may not exceed the excess of 10 over the aggregate number of days taken into account for this purpose for all preceding quarters (e.g., if an employee had received pay sick leave for 6 days in the first quarter of the year, then only 4 days would be available in the second quarter).

However, the amount of the credit is increased by so much of the employer’s qualified health plan expenses as are properly allocable to the qualified sick leave wages for which the credit was allowed. Qualified health plan expenses means amounts paid or incurred by an employer to provide and maintain a group health plan, to the extent such amounts are excludible from gross income under the Code. Treasury is directed to issue allocation rules but, unless such rules are to the contrary, an allocation will be treated as proper if made on a pro rata basis among covered employees and pro rata based on the period of coverage.

If the tax credit exceeds the employer’s total liability for payroll taxes for all employees for any calendar quarter, the excess credit is refundable to the employer. For example, if an employer paid $100, 000 in paid sick leave and its payroll tax liability for that quarter was $50,000, it would not make any payroll tax deposit, and would request an expedited refund credit for $50,000. Employers may elect to not have the credit apply. No deduction is allowed for the amount of the tax credit, and no credit is allowed with respect to wages for which a credit is allowed under Internal Revenue Code Section 45S, which provides a tax credit for certain paid family and medical leave.

Self-Employed Individuals

There is a refundable tax credit equal to 100% of a qualified sick leave equivalent amount for eligible self-employed individuals who are under quarantine, are advised to self-quarantine, or have symptoms and are seeking a diagnosis.

For those caring for a quarantined individual, or for a son or daughter whose school or day care has been closed or whose child care provider is unavailable due to coronavirus, or who has experienced other circumstances certified by the Secretary of the Treasury, the refundable tax credit is equal to 67% of the qualified sick leave amount.

The tax credit is allowed against income taxes and is refundable. The credit is capped at $511 per day for the amount paid to self-employed individuals who are under quarantine, are advised to self-quarantine, or have symptoms and are seeking a diagnosis.

For amounts paid to employees caring for a quarantined individual, or a son or daughter whose school or day care center has closed or whose child care provider is unavailable due to coronavirus, the credit is capped at $200 per day.

The aggregate number of days in a period cannot exceed 10, reduced by the number of days previously used.

To calculate the qualified sick leave equivalent amount, an eligible self-employed individual may only take into account those days that the individual is unable to work and is eligible for emergency paid sick leave.

Self-employed individuals must maintain documentation to establish their eligibility for the tax credit.

The qualified sick leave equivalent is reduced to the extent that the qualified sick leave equivalent, plus the qualified sick leave wages from an employer, exceeds $5,110 or $2,000, as applicable (depending on the basis for the sick leave).

Emergency Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act

Employers with fewer than 500 employees, and government employers, must provide each employee who has been employed for at least 30 days with 12 weeks of mostly paid family and medical leave if he or she is unable to work or telework because the employee needs to care for his or her son or daughter, who is under the age of 18, if the child’s school or place of care has been closed, or the child-care provider is unavailable due to a coronavirus declared emergency. That is, it appears that if a parent is at home to take care of a child who is at home because of a coronavirus emergency, and the parent is able to work remotely from home, the parent will not be entitled to the leave. Note that this Act adds an additional basis for taking FMLA leave (loss of child care), but does not increase the length of FMLA leave.

Rehired employees who were laid off no earlier than March 1, 2020, can be eligible immediately if they had at least 30 calendar days of work for the employer, out of the last 60 days, prior to their layoff. In other words, if an employer has had to lay off some employees, the employer can rehire them and put them on paid leave subject to the FMLA Expansion Act without their having to work an additional thirty days.

Employees may take paid family and medical leave after they take the emergency paid sick leave described above. The first 10 days for which an employee takes leave under the FMLA Expansion Act may consist of unpaid leave, but if the employee qualifies for the emergency paid sick leave, the employee may get paid for those 10 days under the Sick Leave Act. An employee may elect to substitute any accrued vacation leave, personal leave, or medical or sick leave for unpaid leave.

Healthcare providers and emergency responders are not required to provide paid family leave to employees. Also, employers with fewer than 50 employees are exempt from the paid family and medical leave requirements if the provision of the paid family and medical leave would jeopardize the business as a going concern. Employers seeking an exemption should carefully document how paid family and medical leave would jeopardize the business. Employers who would not otherwise be employers under the FMLA are excluded from civil enforcement actions by employees.

At present, employees who are laid off before the paid family and medical leave requirements go into effect, will not be eligible for paid family and medical leave. Employees who are furloughed on or after April 1, 2020, are also ineligible for paid family and medical leave. If an employer closes its worksite on or after April 1, 2020, employees will also be ineligible for paid family medical leave.

After the first 10 days of expanded family and medical leave, employees must receive a benefit from their employers equal to two-thirds of the employee’s regular rate of pay times the number of hours the employee would otherwise be normally scheduled to work, with special rules for making this calculation for employees with a variable hourly schedule. Benefits shall not exceed $200 per day, or $10,000 in the aggregate, per employee.

Employers that contribute to multiemployer plans may fulfill their obligations under the Sick Leave Act (if consistent with the collective bargaining agreement) by making contributions to the multiemployer plan based on the paid leave that each of its employees is entitled to receive under the collective bargaining agreement. Employees who work under a collective bargaining agreement may secure pay from the fund, plan, or program based on the hours they have worked under the collective bargaining agreement.

If the credit exceeds the employer’s total liability under the employer’s portion of the social security tax for all employees for any calendar quarter, the excess credit is refundable to the employer. Employers may elect to not have the credit apply. No deduction is allowed for the amount of the tax credit. No tax credit is allowed with respect to wages for which a credit is allowed under Section 45S, which provides a tax credit for certain paid family and medical leave.

Requirements for Group Health Plans

Group health plans and insurers offering health insurance coverage must cover, may not impose any cost-sharing requirements (e.g., deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance) for, and may not impose any prior authorization or other medical management requirements on, the following items and services:

Products used to test for COVID-19 and the administration of such products, if:

  1. a test has been approved by the FDA;
  2. the developer of a test has submitted it – or intends to submit it – for FDA approval;
  3. a test has been developed in and authorized by a state that has notified the Secretary of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) that it intends to review such tests; or
  4. any other test that the Secretary of HHS determines should be covered, in appropriate guidance;
  5. Items and services furnished to an individual during visits to a health care (including telehealth), urgent care center, or emergency room that result in COVID-19 testing; and

Any “qualifying coronavirus preventive service,” that is:

  • An “evidence-based” item or service, with a rating of A or B in the recommendations of the United States  Preventive Services Task Force (the “Task Force”), or
  • An immunization recommended for the individual receiving it by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the “Committee”).

Payment by the plan or insurer for diagnostic testing must be at payment rates negotiated before the Emergency was declared, if such rates have been negotiated. Otherwise, payment will be at the testing provider’s cash price as listed by the provider on a public Internet Website, or at a negotiated rate that is less than that price. There is a specific requirement for each provider of COVID-19 tests to post its cash price for the test on a public Internet Website, and a provider can be fined up to $300 for each day during the declared emergency that the requirement is violated.

The above testing provisions were effective March 18, 2020, and expire when the Secretary of HHS determines that the Emergency has ended. The requirement to cover a qualifying coronavirus preventive service is effective 15 business days after the date the recommendation is made by the task force or committee in question, and appears to be permanent.

HSAs, FSAs, HRAs, and Archer MSAs

For plan years beginning on or before December 31, 2021, telehealth and other remote care services will be able to be provided by a plan without charging a deductible, and doing so will not disqualify a person eligible for such services from making HSA contributions.

Also, certain over-the-counter items will be allowed to be paid for by HSA, FSA, HRA, and Archer MSA funds whether or not they have been prescribed. In addition, menstrual care products will be considered as medical expenses for purposes of being able to be paid by HSAs. This applies to amounts paid from HSAs and Archer MSAs after December 31, 2019; with respect to FSAs and HRAs, it applies to expenses incurred on or after December 31, 2019.

Conclusion

Paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave is available to eligible employees on April 1, 2020. Any wages required to be paid under the Sick Leave Act and the FMLA Expansion Act will not be considered wages for purposes of the employer’s portion of the social security tax. However, the tax credits described above (other than the tax credits available for self-employed individuals) are increased by the Medicare surtax on qualified sick leave wages and qualified family medical leave wages, subject to the no double benefit rule, as described above, precluding taking a tax deduction for such amount.

At present, there are a number of questions regarding these leaves and the tax credits, which hopefully will be addressed in guidance very soon.

Additional guidance regarding paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave is expected. Guidance already issued from the Department of Labor includes a notice that must be posted in a conspicuous location (e.g., with other labor law posters). Click here for a copy of the notice.

In addition to the leave requirements, employer group health plans will be required to pay for COVID-19 testing and vaccinations. For testing providers that do not have negotiated network arrangements, the plan must pay their cash rate of pay, but that rate of pay must be posted on a public Website. Also, telehealth services can be provided without cost-sharing, and without disqualifying the recipients for HSA contributions, and over-the-counter drugs and medical supplies can be paid by HSAs, FSAs, HRAs, and Archer MSAs.

Withdrawals and Loans from Defined Contribution Retirement Plans

March 30, 2020

In reaction to the current volatility in the economy due to the coronavirus pandemic, we have been receiving a large number of questions from defined contribution plan sponsors regarding ways participants can access money in their accounts. While recognizing such leakage may cause future headaches for participants in their retirement, many individuals do not have the resources to weather this storm and have no other option but to access their retirement accounts.

In-service withdrawals. Many defined contribution plans permit in-service withdrawals. Such withdrawals generally can be provided without restriction from rollover accounts, upon attainment of age 59-1/2 and in the event of a financial hardship. Although salary deferral contributions and safe harbor contributions cannot be distributed unless or until a participant attains age 59-1/2, becomes disabled or terminates employment, plans with profit sharing features can provide in-service withdrawals under other situations. For example, participants may be able to withdraw vested profit sharing amounts if they have been plan participants for at least five years or if the contributions have been in the plan for at least two years.

With respect to hardship withdrawals, not every state has been declared a national emergency for which hardship withdrawals are available under the IRS’s “safe harbor” deemed reasons, and even then an individual has to live and/or work in an affected area for which FEMA will provide individual assistance. In addition, participants could separately satisfy one or more of the deemed hardship situations in the plan – for medical care and expenses, to prevent foreclosure, to pay tuition, etc. Hardship withdrawals are generally subject to ordinary income taxes and a 10% early distribution penalty tax if taken before the participant attains age 59-1/2.

Plan sponsors also may make coronavirus-related distributions available. As noted in our explanation of the CARES Act, coronavirus-related distributions are available at any time during calendar 2020 by an individual (i) who is diagnosed with COVID-19 by a CDC-approved test, (ii) whose spouse or dependent is diagnosed with COVID-19 by a CDC-approved test, (iii) who “experiences adverse financial consequences as a result of being quarantined, being furloughed or laid off, or having work hours reduced due to” COVID-19, (iv) who is unable to work due to COVID-19 child care issues, (v) who has closed or reduced hours in a business owned or operated by the individual, due to COVID-19, or (vi) who has experienced other factors as determined by the Secretary of the Treasury. The administrator of the plan may rely on the individual’s certification that the individual qualifies for a coronavirus-related distribution under these categories.

The 10% early distribution penalty tax will not apply to such distributions up to $100,000. The amount distributed may be re-contributed to that plan or another plan within three years after the date the distribution is received, and if the individual does not re-contribute the distribution within that time period, taxes on the distribution may be spread over a 3-year period. Federal income tax withholding is not required on a coronavirus-related distribution, and a direct rollover need not be offered.

Participants whose employment is terminated usually can take a distribution of their entire vested account balance from a defined contribution plan. Also, if a partial plan termination occurs, terminated participants will have to be made fully vested in their accounts. A partial plan termination may occur if one or a series of employer-initiated employment terminations (permanent layoffs and reductions in force) affects 20% or more of the workforce; we explain the mechanics of partial plan terminations in our article “Partial Plan Terminations of Qualified Plans” (The ASPPA Journal, Winter 2010).

Loans. Many defined contributions plans permit participants to borrow against their vested plan accounts. Participants might not recognize negative implications of taking a loan from a plan, which include: initial issuance and annual fees, missing out on growth through tax-deferred earnings, selling investments at bottom of market, making repayments from after-tax amounts, and the potential taxes and penalties resulting from default or if repayments are missed.

However, a participant with an outstanding plan loan who is placed on an unpaid leave of absence may forego making loan payments during the leave of absence without triggering taxation of the loan, provided the following requirements are met:

  1. The unpaid leave of absence does not exceed one year.
  2. The loan must still be repaid by the end of the original term of the loan. Thus, the participant may make up the missed loan repayments upon returning to work, resume the original repayments with a lump sum payment of the missed repayments at the end of the term, or increase the amount of each repayment for the remainder of the repayment period upon returning to work.

Subject to the plan’s loan policy (as it may be amended), participants also may continue to make repayments from their personal accounts, provided the trustee will accept direct checks or electronic transfers. If participants are already making repayments from their personal accounts, the plan administrator can confirm whether the plan’s loan policy permits suspension of repayments, and notify affected participants accordingly.

Also note that participants who are laid off/terminated generally have until the end of the calendar quarter following the calendar quarter in which repayments are missed to cure the missed repayments. Otherwise, the participant will be taxed on the balance of the loan. However, employers may permit terminated employees to continue to make loan repayments, either from severance pay or from their personal accounts, but the plan’s loan policy must provide for the ability to make such repayments.

Plan sponsors may amend their plan documents or loan policies to provide added flexibility within limits, including, in addition to the repayment options noted above, allowing participants to take more loans than are currently offered or additional money types that might otherwise be restricted.

Plan sponsors also may modify their plan documents or loan policies to reflect changes made by the CARES Act. As noted in our explanation of the CARES Act, legal limitations on loans from qualified plans have been relaxed. For example, the limit on loans is increased from 50% of a participant’s vested account balance up to $50,000, to 100% of the participant’s vested account balance up to $100,000 for loans to “qualified individuals” made during the 180-day period from the date of enactment. A “qualified individual” is one who could meet the same coronavirus-related tests discussed above for coronavirus-related distributions.

The CARES Act also allows the plan to delay the due date for any repayment by a “qualified individual” of a participant loan that would occur from the date of enactment through December 31, 2020, for up to one year. Later repayments for such loans are adjusted to reflect the delayed due date and any interest accruing during such delay. The delay period is ignored in determining the 5-year maximum period for such loan.

The long-term prospects for the economy are uncertain, but the immediate short-term impact of the current degradation in economic growth has been significant. Employers may take steps to allow participants to access amounts in their defined contribution plan accounts. The Wagner Law Group can provide whatever assistance is needed to review and revise plan documents, draft amendments and prepare employee communications for employers wishing to expand the availability of in-service withdrawals or loans.

Retirement Plan Provisions of CARES Act

March 27, 2020

The third COVID-19 stimulus package has provisions regarding retirement plans, including expanded and penalty-free withdrawal rights, expanded loan rights, extended rights to repay loans and withdrawals, and a deferral of mandatory distributions.

Coronavirus-Related Distributions

The 10% early distribution penalty from retirement plans and IRAs under Section 72(t) of the Internal Revenue Code (the “Code”) will not apply to “coronavirus-related distributions” up to $100,000 per person from the person’s retirement plan accounts. The amount distributed may be re-contributed to the retirement plan, or to another plan, within three years after the date the distribution is received, without regard to any plan limit on contributions. If the individual does not re-contribute the distribution within that time period, taxation on the distribution may be spread over a 3-year period. Federal income tax withholding is not required on a coronavirus-related distribution, and a direct rollover need not be offered.

A coronavirus-related distribution may be taken at any time in calendar year 2020, by an individual (i) who is diagnosed with COVID-19 by a CDC-approved test, (ii) whose spouse or dependent is diagnosed with COVID-19 by a CDC-approved test, (iii) who “experiences adverse financial consequences as a result of being quarantined, being furloughed or laid off, or having work hours reduced due to” COVID-19, (iv) who is unable to work due to COVID-19 child care issues, (v) who has closed or reduced hours in a business owned or operated by the individual, due to COVID-19, or (vi) who has experienced other factors as determined by the Secretary of the Treasury. The administrator of the plan may rely on the individual’s certification that the individual qualifies for a coronavirus-related distribution under these categories.

Loans from Qualified Plans

The $50,000 loan limit, for loans from qualified plans to “qualified individuals” made during the 180-day period from the date of enactment, is increased to $100,000, and the cap of 50% of the present value of the vested benefit is increased to 100% of such present value.

The due date for any repayment by a “qualified individual” of a participant loan that would occur from the date of enactment through December 31, 2020, is delayed for up to one year. Later repayments for such loan are also adjusted “appropriately” to reflect the prior delayed due date “and any interest accruing during such delay.” The delay period is ignored in determining the 5-year maximum period for such loan.

A “qualified individual” who could be eligible for these expanded loan limits and loan delays is one who could meet the same coronavirus-related tests as discussed above for coronavirus-related distributions.

Plan Amendments

A plan may be amended to provide for these expanded distribution and loan options. Plan amendments for both the coronavirus-related distribution and plan loan provisions need not be made until at least the last day of the first plan year beginning on or after January 1, 2022. The due date for amendments to governmental plans is two years later than such date.

Minimum Required Distributions

Minimum distributions otherwise required in 2020 from defined contribution plans need not be made. Minimum distributions with required beginning dates in calendar year 2020, which have not yet been made by January 1, 2020, and which are required from defined contribution plans, need not be made in 2020. This waiver is applicable to (i) defined contribution 401(a) qualified plans, (ii) defined contribution 403(a) and 403(b) plans, (iii) governmental defined contribution 457(b) plans, and (iv) individual retirement accounts. If this provision is treated in the same manner as the analogous 2009 relief, a plan sponsor may have discretion as to whether it should be adopted.

Plan amendments for these provisions are not required until the last day of the first plan year beginning on or after January 1, 2022 (January 1, 2024 for governmental plans).

Defined Benefit Plan Funding Requirements

Single employer defined benefit plan funding requirements for 2020, including quarterly contributions, may be deferred until January 1, 2021, at which time they must be paid with interest. In determining the application of benefit restrictions in plan years containing the 2020 calendar year, a plan sponsor may elect to apply the plan’s 2019 funded status.

© 2020 Wagner Law Group.

The Big Sick Leave: How Bad Will The Economy Get?

“Don’t let the cure be worse than the disease.”

The disease in that expression refers to the death toll from COVID-19. The cure refers to the induced coma of physical-distancing that holds much of the US economy in suspense for an unknowable length of time, threatening a recession or even depression.

As one writer put it, we face a trade-off between “lives and livelihoods.” Suppressing the disease means suppressing the economy. We can minimize the economic damage by returning to work. But if we go back to work, we infect more people and maximize the death toll.

Even with widespread self-quarantine, the disease produces more victims than hospitals can handle. COVID-19 mainly victimizes the old and immune-compromised. But the virus is just fickle enough in choosing whom to kill that even healthy people feel (justifiably) anxious and vulnerable.

Governors, mayors and the White House sense the public’s wish to put people first. But what will the economic effects be? How long could a recession last? What will it cost? Who will bear the costs? Can government and business cooperate to limit the economic pain?

Economic forecasts

Economists in the public and private sectors are working overtime—presumably from their homes—to make projections. Overall, they’re not sure whether we’ll have a V-shaped crisis that’s deep but brief, a U-shaped crisis that’s deep but longer, or an L-shaped crisis similar to Greece’s depression after 2010.

32% unemployment possible. On March 24, an economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve estimated that the U.S. unemployment rate could swell to 32% during the second quarter of this year, with almost 53 million people out of work. He added the current number of unemployed Americans, 5.76 million, to an estimated 47 million people in high-contact jobs— sales, production, food service, barbers and hairstylists, flight attendants and others—who are likely to be laid off.

A 2% drop in consumption, bottoming out after 29 weeks. If 215 million Americans get infected and 2.2 million die, “We find that the epidemic causes a relatively mild recession,” write a team of academics at Northwestern University and the Freie Universitat Berlin in a new article. “Aggregate consumption falls by roughly 2% from peak to trough, with the latter occurring 29 weeks after the onset of the infection. In the long-run, population and real GDP decline permanently by 0.65% reflecting the death toll from the epidemic.”

A 14% drop in consumption for 50 weeks. But the same team adds that if the U.S. takes severe containment measures, prolonging a national quarantine until a vaccine or treatment appears, then “a very large, persistent recession: consumption falls by about 14% for roughly 50 weeks” might occur. On the plus side, this policy would prevent an estimated 250,000 to 600,000 deaths.

Real US GDP is likely to be flat in 2020: “The impact of social distancing on consumer spending activity and a knockdown effect on business investment, together with the oil price hit on capital investments in energy infrastructure and expanded travel bans, likely means a -1.0% reading in the first quarter and a large contraction of 6.0% for GDP growth in the second, signaling recession for the U.S.,” write analysts at S&P Global Ratings.

“For the year, we now forecast real GDP is likely to be flat in 2020 (versus our +1.9% forecast before the virus). We continue to expect a slow U-shaped recovery in the second half following a second-quarter slump,” they added, noting, “Uncertainty in our estimates of growth in 2020 is higher than usual.”

The US economy will contract by 2.8% this year, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. The EIU also expected China’s real GDP growth to stand at only 1% in 2020, compared with 6.1% in 2019. The eurozone will post a full-year recession of 5.9%, including recessions in Germany (-6.8%), France (-5%) and Italy (-7%). In Latin America, Argentina (-6.7%), Brazil (-5.5%), and Mexico (-5.4%) are predicted to experience recessions.

An S&P target range of 1,800-2,000 by summer. The global research firm TS Lombard said in a March 31 bulletin, “We reckon investors are currently too optimistic about the post-virus recovery on the back of policymakers’ responses. Rather than a bounce in activity, we expect a slow re-opening of the economy in tandem with continued social distancing… This means valuations are unlikely to recover quickly, and means the decline after this dead cat bounce is likely to make new lows.”

How long till it’s over?

No one expects the crisis to resolve before the summer. Assuming that no effective vaccine or treatment appears suddenly, we’re probably in for a long campaign, possibly interrupted with new flare-ups in places that the initial waves of the pandemic missed.

“Even under severe social distancing scenarios, it is likely that the health system will be overwhelmed, which is indicated to happen when the portion of the U.S. population actively infected and suffering from the disease reaches 1% (about 3.3 million current cases),” writes economist Andrew Atkeson of UCLA.

“More severe mitigation efforts do push the date at which this happens back from six months from now to 12 months from now or more, perhaps allowing time to invest heavily in the resources needed to care for the sick,” he adds.

“Under almost all of the scenarios considered, at the peak of the disease progression, between 10% and 20% of the population (33 to 66 million people) suffers from an active infection at the same time. In the model simulations, this peak infection period occurs between seven and 14 months from now.”

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Protect Your Nest Egg with Options

Americans have now experienced the hazards of investing for a second time in 12 years, but unfortunately, they’ve rarely taken advantage of the protections that institutions enjoy. Investors saw as much as a third of their nest eggs disappear in 2008. This year, coronavirus has already taken a quarter of what many had accumulated.

Back in 2008, many individual investors and retirement plan participants dumped their investments only to find that, when the market came roaring back, they were not part of the rapid recovery. Instead, these investors did not reenter the market until prices had risen without them.

This habit of dumping investments in the face of a crisis and then missing the recovery is the main reason that individual investors do not earn as much as institutions. But holding on to investments in a crisis is not the only reason institutions do better. They also buy protection in the event that the market fails to recover!

The protection that institutions use is generally not offered to individuals or plan participants. No one—including most financial advisers—ever explains to them how this works or provides a simple way of obtaining it. But we’re about to show you how to do so.

How institutions protect their investments

The fund managers at institutions know that investment markets rise and fall, sometimes farther than other times. They also realize that over time the rising is more than the falling. The institutions also know that there are a large number of investors who make bets on the market activity.

Just like the football pool at the office or workshop, some people win their bets and others lose. Knowing all this, institutions place their bets on both sides. In that way, “Heads I win, tails you lose.” Not a bad way to do business, if you can do it. And yes, you can.

Protecting plan participants

The “bets” are known as options. Thousands of different options exist, some that bet on the markets to rise and others that bet on a decline. Some bet on specific stocks or commodities and others bet on the market as a whole.

For most individual investors, it is enough to buy protection against a decline, since their investments (as opposed to the options themselves) will reward them when the market rises. While individuals can buy protection against a decline in the value of their own investments, this is both difficult and unnecessary.

It is difficult because this would require a customized bet, and not all individuals have enough assets to justify the expense of a customized bet. It is unnecessary because they can buy less expensive generic bets, called index options, which pay off when the value of the market as a whole goes down.

The most widely used index options are options on movements of the S&P 500 Index. These come in two basic varieties, but individuals and plan participants need only consider the bet known as a “put,” which pays when the market declines.

You need to answer four key questions in order to protect yourself against market declines with an S&P 500 Index Put:

  • Where does one buy an S&P 500 Index Put?
  • How many of these Puts are needed?
  • What is the cost?
  • What are the risks?
Purchasing an S&P 500 Index Put

The S&P 500 Index Put is a security that can be purchased through most brokerage firms.

Index puts may be available to plan participants if their plan has a self-directed brokerage (SDBA) feature and they have a brokerage account that permits options. Outside of a plan, individuals can purchase puts through a discount brokerage account or, with their adviser’s help, through the adviser’s broker-dealer.

How much to buy?

Either way, an investor needs to buy sufficient puts to cover up to 100% of the potential losses on their investments. (As with any type of insurance, the potential loss depends on the value of the asset, the degree of coverage, and the duration of the coverage.) This coverage will be needed for as long as the market is expected to decline. Market recoveries usually occur within three months after an initial decline. To be covered all the time, investors can buy puts that expire and renew annually.

Each put has a strike price that represents the level of the bet that’s make. For cost-effective protection, use a strike price that is “at the money,” or close to the current price of the index. If the strike price is “out of the money,” or higher that the current price of the index, protection will cost more.

If the strike price is lower than the current price of the index (an “out of the money” put), the put will cost less but protection will also be less. Investors and their advisers can calculate the number of puts, expiration and strike price themselves or with any of several available online tool.

Cost of Index Puts

For the index put to be worthwhile, the cost must be far less than the potential loss. The cost of “at the money” puts ranges from 1% to 3% of the amount at risk, depending on the expiration date and the market volatility at the time. This means that the index put becomes profitable if the market declines 1% to 3% or more.

If the value of the investments falls farther than that, the profit from the put will pay for any additional market loss in the investments. If the market rises, the value of the investments increases and covers the cost of the puts.

This cost of 2% (average of 1% to 3%) lowers investment returns to a far lesser extent than using cash or bonds for protection. Historically (since 1928), a protective allocation to cash has lowered equity returns by 7.6% and to bonds has lowered equity returns by 6.1%.

Risks of Index Puts

Options are bets and therefore can be risky, depending on how they are used. The use described in this article is potentially the safest possible use of options. In fact, the risks here are less than the risks of the investments themselves.

Risks are neutralized by:

  • Diversification; achieved by buying a put on a broad-based market index.
  • Not using leverage; the options are not financed with borrowed money, but are backed by the investor’s own assets.
  • Liquidity; achieved by using the S&P500 Index, the most popular index in the world.
  • Trading convenience; the option can be purchased or sold on any trading day.
Conclusion

Use of index puts to protect individual investments is a drag on portfolio performance over the long term. But they help investors avoid the market shocks that occur periodically and cause them to act imprudently in trying to escape volatile markets. For this reason, it is highly prudent for plan sponsors and financial advisers to offer such protection to participants or clients who seek a less bumpy path to retirement income security.

Note: Over recent days, stock prices have benefited from quarter-end rebalancing strategies and a rebound from the fastest drawdown in stock prices ever. However, we believe investors should prepare for more volatility once we move through this short-term market dynamic.

As long as the U.S. remains in a health crisis, the market is unlikely to calm down in a more lasting fashion. Covid-19 cases are growing, and at an uneven pace across the country. It is also unlikely that America as a whole will return to regular activity over the next few weeks. This point alone increases the risk economic/market activity could be volatile, and unpredictable at times.

© 2020 DALBAR. Used by permission.

The ‘Fed Put’ Hurts Annuities—and Retirees

In 2018, a light flashed at the end of a long tunnel of low interest rates. By December of that year, the Fed funds rate had ticked incrementally up, to 2.4% from 1.4%. The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds reached 3.23%. The yield on AAA corporate bonds pierced the 4% barrier.

I started feeling optimistic about Boomer retirement.

If the Fed stayed the course set by chair Janet Yellen (who raised rates from 0.07% in February 2014 to 1.42% in February 2018) and maintained by her successor, Jerome Powell, bonds and annuities had increasingly attractive yields. U.S. retirees might have low-risk, inflation-beating alternatives to stocks after a long drought.

But that light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train—perhaps the “R” train to Whitehall Street in Manhattan’s financial district.

In 4Q2018, as the Fed funds rate tightened to 2.2%, there was an equities sell-off. The S&P500 fell 17.5% (to 2,416 from 2,929). Perceiving the swoon as a political liability, President Trump floated a trial balloon about firing Powell.

Despite the Fed’s supposed “independence,” Powell flinched. He reversed the tightening policy and lowered the Fed funds rate three times in 2019. The S&P500 would roar to 3,380 by the following February—a gain of 40% in less than 14 months. Then along came a pandemic, and the index fell 35%, inspiring a rate cut to zero.

The ‘Fed Put’

You’ve heard of the “Fed put.” It’s shorthand for Alan Greenspan’s accommodative Fed policy—a sharp drop in the Fed funds rate—in response to financial market crises starting in the late 1980s. Traders came to expect Fed to ease rates to relieve a slump in stock and bond prices. The expression isn’t necessarily complimentary. It implies an unhealthy codependency, conducive to moral hazard, between the Fed and the equity markets.

History of Fed Funds rate

The Fed’s accommodation of the Street has been terrible for annuity issuers, pension funds and aging Boomers who need safe, viable alternatives to the stock market to fund their retirements. Three times over the past two decades, falling rates have come to the aid of the markets, and subsequently rising rates have triggered crashes. This volatility is great for traders. It’s a nightmare for the rest of us.

COVID-19 will inevitably take the blame for the 2020 stock crash (and the recession or even depression that may follow). Of course that’s a big factor. But Fed accommodation helped pump the S&P500 Index up by an unwarranted 33% after December 2018. It was ripe for profit-taking when the coronavirus pandemic struck the U.S., and fell 35% in two weeks.

Now we’re back to zero rates. If we follow the roller-coaster pattern set over the last 20 years, we’ll see another rise in stocks, then a reach for yield and over-leveraging, then a cautious tightening until, Boom, the Jenga pile collapses again and we’re back to low rates. It’s getting old, and so are the Boomers.

Letter to Financial Times

Desmond Lachman, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), former Salomon Smith Barney economist, International Monetary Fund official, and lecturer at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, is also fed-up with this whipsaw. In response to a March 18 op-ed piece in the Financial Times by Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, Lachman wrote:

The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy under their watch might have set us up for the financial market turmoil that we are experiencing today. Along with the world’s other major central banks, it did so by creating a global equity bubble and by causing the gross mispricing of credit risk as investors were encouraged to stretch for yield.

On the basis of their experience, it would have been both helpful and timely had the former Fed chairs cautioned that we should not repeat the mistake of responding to the current economic and financial market crisis as we did to the last one by putting an undue burden on monetary policy for promoting the next economic recovery.

Lachman was scheduled to participate in an AEI-sponsored panel discussion last Wednesday entitled, “Is this global credit and asset price bubble really different?” The panel’s premise was that “Many years of ultra-easy monetary policy by the world’s major central banks have boosted global debt to record levels, supported a worldwide equity market boom, and reduced interest rates to unprecedentedly low levels. This event will consider how the current credit and asset market bubble might end and how policymakers should be preparing themselves for that ending.”

Ironically, this timely panel was cancelled due to the coronavirus.

“They got the economy moving after 2008 by creating an asset bubble,” Lachman said in a phone interview with RIJ last Monday. “They encouraged people to take on a huge amount of risk and lend to borrowers in ways that didn’t compensate for the risk of default. We should have had helicopter money in 2008-2009 instead of the Fed distorting financial markets.”

By reducing rates to almost zero, and forcing investors to reach for yield by taking on more risk, the central banks have only set the US and European economies up for a bigger bust in the future. “I think were in the ‘bigger bust’ now,” Lachman said. “And we’re going to repeat the same scenario. They’ll do all sort of things to prop up assets, and that will set us up for another fall.”

Analysis of FOMC records

This month, Anna Cieslak of The Fuqua School of Business at Duke and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business published a paper on Fed policy up to 2016 in the article, “The Economics of the Fed Put” (NBER Working Paper 26894).

The investing public is aware of the presence of a Fed put, they found, basing their conclusion on reviews of news reports and minutes or transcripts of the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee). “We show that since the mid-1990s the Fed has engaged in a sequence of policy easing following large stock market declines in the intermeeting period. We refer to this pattern as a ‘Fed put,’ by which we mean policy accommodation following poor stock returns,” they write.

But the Fed, they believe, behaves responsibly. It lowers rates out of concern that a falling equity market will lead to a smaller “wealth effect,” reduced personal consumption, a slower economy, and weaker corporate earnings, they conclude.

“We find that negative stock returns predict target changes [Fed funds rate reductions] mostly due to their strong correlation with downgrades to the Fed growth expectations and the Fed’s assessment of current economic growth,” Cieslak and Vissing-Jorgensen write.

From internal Fed communications through 2016, they don’t find evidence that the Fed has over-reacted to stock market changes, or that the majority of governors believe that they’re encouraging moral hazard (i.e., stimulating excessive risk-taking) by traders by lowering rates.

“While the FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee, which alters the Fed funds rate by buying or selling Treasury bonds] is clearly aware of the potential moral hazard effects of loose policy, especially post-crisis, such concerns do not appear to have a major impact on actual policy choices,” the paper says.

In an interview with RIJ, however, Cieslak noted that traders perceive that a Fed put exists, and dissenting voices on the FOMC have expressed concern that this perception encourages excessive risk-taking.

“If you believe that increased leverage is one sign of excessive risk-taking, there is some evidence of this going on in the broker-dealer sector before the 2008 financial crisis,” she said. “But we don’t see it happening after the financial crisis.”

Back to zero

At the end of 2018, Fed chair Powell should have stood up to President Trump and continued on the path of tightening that Janet Yellen had set. Instead, by lowering rates, the Fed reinforced a dysfunctional pattern. It also ensured another long interest rate drought for the guaranteed retirement products industry.

In order to provide retirees with annuities that have value, life/annuity companies need interest rates that are high enough and stable enough to give their investments in superior bonds a reasonable return. In December 2018, I thought we were approaching that sweet spot. Now I doubt that we’ll get there in my lifetime.

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Investors flee to bonds: Morningstar

Investors backed away from U.S. equity funds and turned to perceived safe havens like bonds and cash in February, after the S&P 500 turned down sharply amid fears of the coronavirus pandemic’s damage to the economy, according to Morningstar’s latest report on mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows.

Morningstar’s report about U.S. fund flows for February 2020 is available here. Highlights from the report include:

  • In February, U.S. equity funds shed $17.5 billion amid the stock market’s turmoil, with that group’s actively managed funds suffering nearly $20.0 billion in redemptions. As evidence of investors’ lack of enthusiasm for U.S. equities, a record $27.8 billion flowed out of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF.
  • Taxable-bond funds led category groups with $23.3 billion in inflows in February. Long-government funds had their strongest inflows since early 2019 as investors hedged their equity positions and appeared willing to take interest-rate risk instead of credit risk.
  • Volatile markets also spurred investors to move into cash equivalents such as money market funds, which collected $31.4 billion in February. For the first time since October 2019, money-market funds gathered more assets than long-term funds, which saw $25.5 billion in inflows in February.
  • Among the top-10 largest U.S. fund families, Vanguard led with long-term inflows of $19.8 billion in February. On the other side, SPDR State Street Global Advisors had the worst outflows of any shop—more than $27.0 billion —owing to SPDR S&P 500 ETF’s outflows.

Morningstar estimates net flow for mutual funds by computing the change in assets not explained by the performance of the fund, and net flow for U.S. ETFs shares outstanding and reported net assets.

© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.