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Don’t Fear the Trade Deficit with China

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Stephen Slifer -

The good news this past week is that Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced that the imposition of tariffs on many Chinese goods imported into the United States is “on hold” in exchange for a pledge that the Chinese would increase significantly their purchases of U.S. goods, primarily agricultural and energy products.

Any agreement that significantly expands the market for U.S. goods overseas is encouraging. However, the agreement does not address the primary issue: The Chinese lack of respect for intellectual property rights and their blatant stealing of U.S. technology. That is what manufacturers we talk to are concerned about.

We are unrepentant believers in “free trade”. The world has been steadily moving in that direction since World War II, and it is generally accepted that all countries have benefited from it. In each country there is a wider array of goods and services available at lower prices than if that country chose to go it alone.

Last year the U.S. had a trade deficit of $568 billion. But so what? All that means is that the U.S. imported more goods from overseas than we purchased globally. Thus, foreigners accumulated $568 billion of dollars because of trade. The counterpart of a $568 billion U.S. trade deficit is $568 billion of foreign capital inflows into the United States. That money will be invested here. Foreigners will start businesses in the U.S., they will create jobs, and/or they will invest it in the stock market. Those are all good things. Thus, in our mind, a laser-like focus on the magnitude of the trade deficit is misplaced. Keep in mind, too, that the U.S. has had a trade deficit of roughly its current size (or larger) since the early 2000’s and nothing bad has happened.

While we are staunch believers in “free” trade, we are equally adamant about our belief in “fair trade.” Therein lies the problem. Free trade works well if all players operate using the same playbook. That is not the case today. Some countries blatantly cheat, the most widely recognized cheater is China. It shows absolutely no regard for intellectual property rights. It routinely ignores patents and copyrights. It steals our technology. These fairness issues are what we hear about most often in our discussions with manufacturers. The recently announced agreement between the U.S. and China does not address these issues which are critical. Hopefully, they will be addressed in subsequent negotiations.

Having said all that, we do not want to completely dismiss the importance of what transpired this week. Please note that the overall trade deficit of $568 billion consists of an $811 billion trade deficit for goods, and a $243 billion trade surplus for services. Of that $800 billion trade deficit in goods, almost half is with one country—China. We do not have trade issues with our neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Nor do we have a problem with Europe or even OPEC. We have a problem with China and a handful of other Asian nations.

Several months ago, President Trump proposed steep tariffs on aluminum and steel products across the board. The Chinese quickly retaliated with tariffs on a variety of U.S. goods and the U.S. was on the cusp of a trade war not only with China but with other countries as well. That was obviously not the desired solution. Nobody wins a trade war. All countries lose. And to impose penalties on our neighbors and allies with whom we do not have a trade issue made no sense. Given the concentrated nature of the trade deficit with just a handful of countries, the focus should have been on those countries with whom we have a problem. Target the measures you intend to take on them. Do not apply restrictions across the board.

What happened this week is vastly different. The agreement is for the Chinese to shrink the bilateral trade deficit by boosting their purchases of U.S. made goods— principally agricultural products and energy. This is not shrinking global trade, it is expanding it. While the Chinese would not agree to a specific target for the reduction in the size of the trade deficit the U.S. was seeking improvement of about $200 billion. Explicitly or implicitly, a $200 billion reduction in an $800 trade deficit in goods, is significant and will lead to an additional $200 billion of U.S. exports.

Some economists were disappointed that the fairness issues were not a part of the recent agreement and have criticized Treasury Secretary Mnuchin for not addressing them. However, Mnuchin said that the previously announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports would remain in place. Presumably, he is using the imposition of the tariffs on those metals as a bargaining chip to crack down on the alleged trade abuses by China. We’ll see.

The Complex Truth about Retiree Medical Costs

Posted on May 24, 2018 by Kerry Pechter -

Estimates of the amount of money that Americans will spend on health care during retirement range from the scary to the staggering. The numbers tend to obscure the fact that Medicare, Medicare supplements and Medicaid prevent most medical catastrophes from becoming financial catastrophes for US retirees.

Some of the projections of lifetime costs are nonetheless shocking. “The average couple [at age 65] will need $280,000 in today’s dollars for medical expenses in retirement, excluding long-term care,” says Fidelity’s website. Syndicated columnist Gail MarksJarvis has written, “The average 65-year-old couple retiring in a year can expect to spend $404,253 in today’s dollars on health insurance and other health care costs.”

Broken down into annual expenses, medical care looks much more affordable. The averages translate into $5,000 to $10,000 per year per retiree, not counting inflation. If you exclude the cost of long-term care (as most estimates do), medical costs in retirement consist largely of the insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays and other out-of-pocket costs that come out of income rather than savings.

Any individual’s actual costs will likely be higher or lower than the average, of course. It depends on genes, luck, health status at retirement, eating and exercise habits, longevity, wealth level, gender, marital status, where you live, how much you can afford to spend, whether you come to rely on Medicaid or charity, how much insurance coverage you buy and whether, if you end up in a nursing home, you choose single or double occupancy.

Horror stories are common enough. Medical costs can easily bankrupt someone with catastrophic health issues who has chosen not to buy “gap” insurance to supplement Medicare. That person could either expect to suffer the indignities and deprivations common before the federal government started subsidizing health insurance for the elderly in the mid-1960s, or try to qualify for Medicaid and other forms of public assistance or charity.

“The Lifetime Medical Spending of Retirees,” a new article from the National Bureau of Economic Research, brings academic discipline to bear on this question. It finds that, from age 70 onward, households will on average face about $122,000 in medical spending in 2014 dollars, including what is received from Medicaid, over their remaining lifetimes.

The range is wide, however. Costs will surpass $330,000 (in 2014 dollars) for five percent of retirees. An unlucky one percent of retired households will face costs of more than $640,000 during retirement. (This article focuses on non-working retired households, either single or married. Single households will have lower costs than couples.)

“For a couple initially in good health and at the median of the income distribution, we find that mean lifetime out-of-pocket (OOP) + Medicaid spending at age 70 is $154K, while mean lifetime OOP age 70 is $127K,” one of the authors, John B. Jones of the Richmond branch of the Federal Research, told RIJ in an email.

“Of the measure of average total annual medical expenses we use in the paper, 14% represent insurance premia (including part Medicare Part B), 21% represents payments by Medicaid, 16% represent out of pocket death (e.g., funeral) expenses, 49% includes other payments for copays/deductibles for doctor visits/nursing home care/drug expenses/hospital visits/dental visits,” Eric French, of the University College London and another co-author of the paper, told RIJ in an email.

In the study, average medical spending (in 2014 dollars) rises from $5,100 per year on average at age 70 to $29,700 at age 100. At the 95th percentile in costs (one in 20 households), the range is $13,400 at age 70 to $111,200 at 100. Average funeral and burial expenses range from $11,000 at age 72 to $34,000 at age 100. In any given year, one in 1,000 households will suffer a health shock that costs more than $125,000 (in 1998 dollars), the NBER economists wrote.

Jones pointed out that his team’s paper involves spending by people who turned 70 about 25 years ago, while recent estimates such as Fidelity’s are based on people who turned 65 recently and will incur rising costs in the future.

“Health spending at all ages rises over time, so today’s 70-year would expect to spend more than 1992’s 70-year old,” he wrote. Adjusting for inflation, he calculated that households turning 70 today would face an estimated $235,000 for lifetime out-of-pocket costs and receive an additional $46,000 from Medicaid, on average.

For comparison, HealthView, a provider of health care cost-projection software, currently estimates that a 70-year-old couple today (assuming that the wife lives two years longer than her husband) can expect future lifetime health care expenses ranging from about $148,000 (if the husband lives to age 78 and the wife to age 80) to almost $399,000 (if the husband live to age 90 and the wife to age 92).

“Our data consists of forward projections based on 70 million pieces of claims data from range of health insurers, broken down by state,” said Ron Mastrogiovanni Sr., who founded HealthView in 2008. His numbers do not include the value of Medicaid coverage. Expenses are concentrated in the final years of life, he added; living an extra two years could mean $70,000 in addition outlays per person.

Although averages have little predictive value for any single individual, they give advisors a place to start when estimating clients’ future outlays for health insurance and out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Risks of needing nursing home care also vary. “Although high-income people are less likely to be in a nursing home at any given age, they live longer, and older individuals are much more likely to be in a nursing home,” the paper said.

Nursing home risks are different for men than women. “While 37% of single women and 36% of married women alive at age 70 will enter a nursing home [for more than 120 days] before they die, the corresponding quantities for single and married men are 26% and 19%, respectively,” the researchers added.

Gender, wealth level, and health status help determine life expectancy, which affects costs. To take the worst-case scenario, a 70-year-old poor man (bottom 10% of income scale) in a nursing home is likely to live only about three years on average. To take the best-case scenario, a 70-year-old woman in the 90th percentile of wealth, in good health, could expect to live more than 15 years.

Marriage improves life expectancy: The average life expectancy of a surviving spouse in good health at age 70 ranges from 16 years (for poor couples) to 19.4 years (for the most affluent couples), the study showed.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services website, per person health care spending for those 65 and older was $18,988 in 2012. Medicare spending grew 3.6% to $672.1 billion in 2016, or 20% of total national health expenditures (NHE). Medicaid spending grew 3.9% to $565.5 billion in 2016, or 17% of total NHE.

According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicare spending in 2013 ($575.8 billion) was financed by these sources: 41% general tax revenue, 38% payroll taxes, and 13% beneficiary premiums. The remaining eight percent came from taxes on Social Security benefits, state sources and interest.

Taxes on US retirees for health care will be going up, especially for those with higher incomes. “The floors for the Net Investment Income Tax and the Medicare surtax passed under the Obama administration aren’t indexed for inflation. Thus more taxpayers will owe both taxes over time,” Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, told RIJ in an email.

“The Medicare story is much more complicated,” he added. “For about 70% of Medicare beneficiaries, a hold-harmless provision in the law means their Part B premiums cannot increase faster than their Social Security benefits. But for those with incomes above about $85,000, premiums will rise faster than Social Security benefits. The increases are tied to income, so the more you make the bigger your premium increase.”

The NBER article cited above was co-authored by John Bailey Jones and Justin Kirchner of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Mariacristina De Nardi of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and Rory McGee and Eric French of University College London. The research was based on data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) collected from retired Americans between 1995 and 2014.

The Old Allure of New Money

Posted on May 24, 2018 by Robert Shiller -

The cryptocurrency revolution, which started with bitcoin in 2009, claims to be inventing new kinds of money. There are now nearly 2,000 cryptocurrencies, and millions of people worldwide are excited by them. What accounts for this enthusiasm, which so far remains undampened by warnings that the revolution is a sham?

One must bear in mind that attempts to reinvent money have a long history. As the sociologist Viviana Zelizer points out in her 1994 book The Social Meaning of Money: “Despite the commonsense idea that ‘a dollar is a dollar is a dollar,’ everywhere we look people are constantly creating different kinds of money.” Many of these innovations generate real excitement, at least for a while.

As the medium of exchange throughout the world, money, in its various embodiments, is rich in mystique. We tend to measure people’s value by it. It sums things up like nothing else. And yet it may consist of nothing more than pieces of paper that just go round and round in circles of spending. So its value depends on belief and trust in those pieces of paper. One might call it faith.

Establishing a new kind of money may be seen as a community’s avowal of faith in an idea, and an effort to inspire its realization. In his book Euro Tragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts, the economist Ashoka Mody argues that the true public justification for creating the European currency in 1992 was a kind of “groupthink,” a faith “embedded in people’s psyches” that “the mere existence of a single currency…would create the impetus for countries to come together in closer political embrace.”

New ideas for money seem to go with the territory of revolution, accompanied by a compelling, easily understood narrative. In 1827, Josiah Warner opened the “Cincinnati Time Store” that sold merchandise in units of hours of work, relying on “labor notes,” which resembled paper money. The new money was seen as a testament to the importance of working people, until he closed the store in 1830.

Two years later, Robert Owen, sometimes described as the father of socialism, attempted to establish in London the National Equitable Labour Exchange, relying

on labor notes, or “time money,” as currency. Here, too, using time instead of gold or silver as a standard of value enforced the notion of the primacy of labor. But, like Warner’s time store, Owen’s experiment failed.

Likewise, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proposed that the central Communist premise – “Abolition of private property” – would be accompanied by a “Communistic abolition of buying and selling.” Eliminating money, however, was impossible to do, and no Communist state ever did so. Instead, as the British Museum’s recent exhibit, “The Currency of Communism,” showed, they issued paper money with vivid symbols of the working class on it. They had to do something different with money.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a radical movement, called Technocracy, associated with Columbia University, proposed to replace the gold-backed dollar with a measure of energy, the erg. In their 1933 book The A B C of Technocracy, published under the pseudonym Frank Arkright, they advanced the idea that putting the economy “on an energy basis” would overcome the unemployment problem. The Technocracy fad proved to be short-lived, though, after top scientists debunked the idea’s technical pretensions.

But the effort to dress up a half-baked idea in advanced science didn’t stop there. In 1932 the economist John Pease Norton, addressing the Econometric Society, proposed a dollar backed not by gold but by electricity. But while Norton’s electric dollar received substantial attention, he had no good reason for choosing electricity over other commodities to back the dollar.

At a time when most households in advanced countries had only recently been electrified, and electric devices from radios to refrigerators had entered homes, electricity evoked images of the most glamorous high science. But, like Technocracy, the attempt to co- opt science backfired. Syndicated columnist Harry I. Phillips in 1933 saw in the electric dollar only fodder for comedy. “But it would be good fun getting an income tax blank and sending the government 300 volts,” he noted.

Now we have something new again: bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which have spawned the initial coin offering (ICO). Issuers claim that ICOs are exempt from securities regulation, because they do not involve conventional money or confer ownership of profits. Investing in an ICO is thought of as an entirely new inspiration.

Each of these monetary innovations has been coupled with a unique technological story. But, more fundamentally, all are connected with a deep yearning for some kind of revolution in society. The cryptocurrencies are a statement of faith in a new community of entrepreneurial cosmopolitans who hold themselves above national governments, which are viewed as the drivers of a long train of inequality and war.

And, as in the past, the public’s fascination with cryptocurrencies is tied to a sort of mystery, like the mystery of the value of money itself, consisting in the new money’s connection to advanced science.

Practically no one, outside of computer science departments, can explain how cryptocurrencies work. That mystery creates an aura of exclusivity, gives the new money glamour, and fills devotees with revolutionary zeal. None of this is new, and, as with past monetary innovations, a compelling story may not be enough.

Health, Wealth & Longevity

Posted on May 24, 2018 by No Author -

Five senators want the fiduciary rule to return from ‘vacation’

Posted on May 24, 2018 by No Author -

In a letter to Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, five Democratic senators have protested his department’s failure to appeal the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal’s May 7 decision vacating the Obama-era fiduciary rule to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the letter, Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Patty Murray (D-WA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked Secretary Acosta to answer three questions:

Since the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, what has the Department done to inform savers of their lack of protections from conflicted retirement advice, now that the Department is no longer enforcing the conflict of interest rule?
Does the Department plan to defend its authority to protect retirement savers, as courts outside of the Fifth Circuit have affirmed, and appeal the Fifth Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court? If not, why not?
If the Department does not appeal the Fifth Circuit’s decision, or it is not overturned on appeal, what will the Department do in the future to protect retirement savers from conflicted advice?

“Allowing the Fifth Circuit’s decision alone to dictate the Department’s policy sets a dangerous precedent by failing to acknowledge the clear difference of opinion among the courts of appeals regarding the Department’s authorities,” the senators wrote. “The Department should defend its authority and this important rule by appealing the Fifth Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court.”

It’s official: Lincoln’s indexed variable annuity has arrived

Posted on May 24, 2018 by No Author -

Lincoln Financial Group this week officially announced the introduction of Lincoln Level Advantage indexed variable annuity for near-retirees and retirees. Unlike many competing products—which LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute now calls “registered index-linked annuities”— it offers both variable and index-linked investment sleeves.

Designed for either commissioned or fee-based advisors, Lincoln Level Advantage offers four index options for growth, several levels of protection against loss and an option to convert the value of the contract into a variable income stream for life.

Sales of registered indexed-linked annuity sales increased 25% in 2017 and are expected to keep growing in 2018, according to LIMRA SRI. LIMRA said the products’ downside buffer and their upside potential through links to equity indexes appeal to investors in today’s uncertain investment environment. LIMRA expects sales to continue to grow throughout 2018.

Lincoln Level Advantage offers linkage to four indexes (the S&P 500, Russell 2000, MSCI EAFE Index, and Lincoln’s Capital Strength Index), three renewable term options (one-year, six-year, and a six-year annual lock option) and four protection options (against losses up to 10%, 20%, 30% or 100% of each contract year’s starting value).

Lincoln’s patented i4LIFE Index Advantage lifetime income rider is available for an additional charge. If selected, it lets clients turn their account value into a variable lifetime income stream and offers certain tax efficiencies.

As the discount rate rises, so do pension funding ratios: Milliman

Posted on May 24, 2018 by No Author -

In April 2018, the 100 largest U.S. corporate pension plans experienced a $20 billion improvement in funded status, according to the results of the latest Pension Funding Index (PFI) from Milliman, the global actuarial and consulting firm. An increase in the corporate bond rates that are used to measure pension liabilities drove the change.

From March 31, 2018 through April 30th, the monthly discount rate increased 12 basis points, to 4.03% from 3.91%; as a result, pension liabilities decreased by $26 billion for the month. The funded ratio for the PFI plans increased to 91.6% from 90.6%, despite a 0.11% investment loss that reduced index assets by $6 billion.

“Corporate pensions continue to get some discount rate relief in 2018, despite volatile equity markets,” said Zorast Wadia, co-author of the Milliman 100 PFI. “Over the past 12 months, with the rise in rates and a 6.17% cumulative asset gain for these plans, we’ve seen the funded ratio climb from 85.5% to 91.6%.”

Under an optimistic forecast with rising interest rates (reaching 4.43% by the end of 2018 and 5.03% by the end of 2019) and asset gains (10.8% annual returns), the funded ratio would climb to 101% by the end of 2018 and 117% by the end of 2019.

Under a pessimistic forecast (3.63% discount rate at the end of 2018 and 3.03% by the end of 2019 and 2.8% annual returns), the funded ratio would decline to 87% by the end of 2018 and 81% by the end of 2019.

To view the complete Pension Funding Index, go to http://us.milliman.com/PFI. To see the 2018 Milliman Pension Funding Study, go to http://us.milliman.com/PFS/.

Honorable Mention

Posted on May 24, 2018 by No Author -

U.S. mutual fund assets down for third straight month

Mutual fund assets slid downward for the third straight month, dropping 0.2% in April to close with assets totaling just more than $14.5 trillion, according to the may 2018 issue of The Cerulli Edge – US Monthly Product Trends Edition.

While the mutual fund asset slide continued into April, ETFs reversed course during the month, increasing total assets by 1.2%. Propelling assets forward were net flows of $28.9 billion, which equate to 0.8% organic growth.

Across all affluent-focused advisory practices, which have a core focus of $2 million or greater, Cerulli finds that almost one-third (29%) of client assets are allocated to passive strategies. HNW-focused registered investment advisors (RIAs) continue to be the largest adopters of ETFs, with 93% of active and passive asset managers citing demand.

Advisors reported that strategic beta would grow from 17% of their allocation to ETF products in 2017 to 22% over the next two years. This is significant as ETFs continue to make up a growing part of client portfolios. Though ETF issuers tend to position strategic beta as a diversification tool and alpha generator, the primary reason financial advisors report choosing them is to mitigate risk in client portfolios.

Life insurers want to invest more in infrastructure, but…

While the Trump administration favors using public-private partnerships (P3s) alongside federal funds, private investment and municipal bonds to finance infrastructure projects, regulatory hurdles still discourage life insurers from investing in P3s and infrastructure, says a new TIAA white paper.

The paper suggests adopting consistent regulations, preserving key tax tools, and streamlining the project-approval process.

Infrastructure projects are attractive to life insurers because of their lower risk, longer, stable terms and generally predictable, steady returns. As of 2017, life insurers had collectively invested over $1 trillion in infrastructure projects.

But the current patchwork of federal and state P3 rules, regulations, structures and procedures often deters greater private-sector investment. TIAA, which manages more than $1.35 billion in municipal bonds, recommended four policy reforms:

Define consistent rules and methodologies across geographies. Harmonize the regulations governing P3s to create a more structured market.

Form an industry working group at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). Create new incentives, remove regulatory impediments, and expedite approvals for insurance companies’ infrastructure investments.

Preserve key tax tools. Maintain or broaden tax exemptions on certain governmental bonds.

Expedite approval processes. Streamline the permitting and review processes to ensure infrastructure projects advance in a more coordinated, efficient manner, while maintaining appropriate oversight.

Through Nuveen, TIAA’s investment manager, the life insurer today manages more than $135 billion in municipal fixed income assets.

To download a copy of TIAA’s white paper on opportunities for infrastructure investment by life insurers, visit http://www.tiaa.org/infrastructure.

John Hancock hires Infosys to digitize operations

John Hancock has engaged Infosys, the technology firm, for a four-year project that will give the insurer’s life and annuity customers a consolidated digital experience and will digitize operations generally, a John Hancock release said.

Upon completion, several legacy systems will be consolidated and John Hancock will be able to provide a more digitally enabled experience across insurance products. John Hancock will retain direct responsibility for all customer interactions, including through its contact center.

“Consolidating multiple legacy systems into a single, integrated platform will reduce the cost of supporting closed in-force blocks of business and increase opportunities to leverage advanced analytics to reengineer the customer experience,” said Naveed Irshad, head of North American Legacy business.

MassMutual publishes market research on Asian Americans

Asian Americans are more concerned about making mistakes with their retirement savings in the years just before and just after retirement, yet are more confident about their investments than other retirees and pre-retirees, new research from MassMutual finds.

Asian American retirees and pre-retirees worry more than other Americans about taking too much risk (69% vs. 44%) or making a poor investment decision (67% vs. 54%) within 15 years before or after retirement, according to the MassMutual Asian American Retirement Risk Study. Asian American pre-retirees (75%) are especially concerned about taking too much investment risk, the study shows.

More so than others, Asian American retirees and pre-retirees believe workers approaching retirement should reduce their investments in equities (64% vs. 53%). Asian Americans are more likely to have more conservative investment goals, aiming to “match the market” (43% vs. 32%) rather than outperform it (55% vs. 65%).

Asian Americans are much less likely than other Americans to reduce retirement savings by making withdrawals or hardship loans or suspending contributions, according to the study. While one in four American retirees and pre-retirees (25%) report engaging in those behaviors, on 11% of Asian American respondents say the same.

Compared to the general population of retirees, for instance, Asian American retirees are more likely to enjoy managing their own money (80% vs. 59%). Only two in five retired Asian Americans (42%) prefer an investment that allows them “set-it-and-forget-it,” compared with nearly three in four pre-retired Asian Americans (72%).

More than half of Asian Americans (53%) are uncertain about the length of their retirement compared to a little over one-third of Americans overall (36%). Fewer Asian American retirees (63%) are confident they know how to claim Social Security at the right time to maximize its benefits, than American retirees overall (75%), according to the study.

Greenwald & Associates conducted the internet-based study for MassMutual, polling 801 retirees who have been retired for no more than 15 years and 804 pre-retirees within 15 years of retirement. Pre-retirees were required to have household incomes of at least $40,000 and retired respondents had at least $100,000 in investable assets and participated in making household financial decisions. The survey included an oversample of Asian Americans for a total of 199 Asian Americans surveyed. Asian American is defined in this research as Chinese, Asian Indian and Korean. The research was conducted January 2018.

Apple leads in stock buybacks with $100 billion in April/May 2018

U.S. companies announced $6.1 billion in daily stock buybacks this past earnings season, according to TrimTabs research. The rate was second only to the $6.6 billion daily announced in the previous earnings season.

New stock buybacks totaled $183.4 billion in the April/May 2018 earnings season, second only to the $191.4 billion in the January/February 2018 earnings season. The volume of buybacks in the latest earnings season was the second highest on record, although the average of 3.7 announcements per day was not much higher than the 3.5 per day in the previous eight earnings seasons.

Five companies—Apple ($100 billion), Broadcom ($12 billion), Facebook ($9 billion), Qualcomm ($8.8 billion), and T-Mobile ($7.5 billion)—accounted for 75% of the $183.4 billion volume.

“The buyback boom early this year confirms our view that the main use of corporate America’s tax savings will be takeovers and stock buybacks rather than capital investment or hiring,” said the TrimTabs release.

Indexed annuities sales up in 1Q2018: LIMRA

Posted on May 24, 2018 by No Author -

Indexed annuity sales were $14.5 billion in the first quarter of 2018, up 11% from the first quarter 2017 and up 4% since last quarter, according to LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute’s (LIMRA SRI) First Quarter 2018 U.S. Retail Annuity Sales Survey.

This was the second strongest start for indexed annuity sales since LIMRA SRI starting tracking annuity sales. LIMRA SRI expects indexed annuity sales to increase 5-10% in 2018.

“For the first time in eight years, we saw [first quarter] growth in the indexed annuity market when compared to fourth quarter,” said Todd Giesing, annuity research director, LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute. “This uptick in sales is a combination of an improved outlook on a regulatory front, as well as rising interest rates creating the opportunity for more attractive rates.”

Overall, U.S. annuity sales were $51.8 billion in the first quarter of 2018, which was level with first quarter 2017 results.

“Due to the DOL fiduciary rule being vacated in April 2018 and the expectation for positive economic factors, we have revised our 2018 annuity forecast and now expect a 5-10% increase in annuity sales growth,” Giesing said.

In the first quarter, variable annuity (VA) sales totaled $24.6 billion, down 1% from the prior year. VA sales declined for the 17th consecutive quarter.

“While this quarter wasn’t strong for VAs, we are seeing some companies introduce new products, raise crediting rates for guaranteed living benefit products and loosen restrictions on investments, said Giesing. “Combined with the vacated Department of Labor fiduciary rule, we expect VA sales will improve throughout the year. As a result, LIMRA SRI is forecasting VA sales to be 0-5% higher in 2018, compared with 2017 results.”

Fee-based VA sales increased 70% to $780 million in the first quarter, but still represent just three percent of the total VA market.

As for structured annuities, LIMRA has chosen the term “registered indexed-linked annuities” to describe them and will include them in the overall VA sales figures. Registered index-linked annuity sales were $2.2 billion, an increase of 4% in the first quarter, compared with the first quarter of 2017. But sales declined 6% when compared with the prior quarter. These products represent about 9% of the retail VA market.

Total sales of fixed annuities remained flat in the first quarter at $27.2 billion. Fixed annuities have outperformed VA sales seven out of the last eight quarters. LIMRA SRI expects overall fixed annuity sales to increase 10-15% in 2018.

Sales of fixed-rate deferred annuities, (book value and market-value-adjusted) fell 14% in the first quarter, to $8.7 billion. After multiple quarters deviating from the 10-year treasury rate, this quarter the sales aligned with the treasury rate growth. LIMRA SRI expects fixed-rate deferred sales to increase 15-20% in 2018.

First quarter single premium immediate annuity (SPIA) sales rose to $2.1 billion in the first quarter, up 5% over the same quarter last year. SPIA sales have remained in the $2 billion to $2.2 billion range for the past two years.

Deferred income annuity (DIA) sales fell 6% in the first quarter 2018 to a five-year low of $515 million. Overall, LIMRA SRI believes that increasing interest rates and other economic factors will cause combined SPIA and DIA sales to grow 5-10% in 2018.

The first quarter 2018 Annuities Industry Estimates can be found in the LIMRA SRI’s updated Data Bank. To view variable, fixed and total annuity sales over the past 10 years, visit Annuity Sales 2008-2017.

To view the top twenty rankings of total, variable and fixed annuity writers for first quarter 2018, please visit First Quarter 2018 Annuity Rankings. To view the top twenty rankings of only fixed annuity writers for first quarter 2018, please visit First Quarter 2018 Fixed Annuity Rankings.

LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute’s First Quarter U.S. Individual Annuities Sales Survey represents data from 96% of the market.

Pressure to reinsure VA riders may ease: A.M. Best

Posted on May 24, 2018 by No Author -

To reduce the “non-economic volatility” associated with minimum guarantee benefit riders and to better align those risks with their hedging programs, variable annuity writers often reinsure this business with affiliated captives. But they may not need to do that as much in the future.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) is considering steps to modify reserve and capital requirements so that non-economic volatility is diminished, according to “Current VA Reserve and Capital Requirements Challenging L/A Insurers,” a new report from the rating agency A.M. Best.

“The use of captive reinsurance is likely to decline significantly, as a result of the recommended changes,” said George Hansen, senior industry research analyst at A.M. Best, in a release. “So long as true economic values and those of various accounting regimes differ, the use of alternative financing methods will continue.”

“Of the four primary guaranteed benefit types, guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit bases exceed the account value, while death benefits, income benefits and accumulation benefits have account values exceeding benefit bases as of year end 2016,” Hansen told RIJ in an email.

“The data is based on what companies submit in our Supplemental Rating Questionnaire (SRQ). Most VA writers offering guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits have very strict limits on where policyholders allocate funds in order to reduce volatility. Therefore, the account value growth may be much lower than how the S&P 500 performs.”

Oliver Wyman has conducted two quantitative impact studies with large variable annuity writers and made recommendations to the NAIC in December 2017. Regulators and other industry groups are reviewing these recommendations with no fixed schedule for implementation.

A primary recommendation involves changing the accounting treatment for such hedges to better align them with the respective liability. Hedges are currently marked to market, leading to non-economic volatility. Amortizing the cost of hedges over a period closely matching the liabilities will minimize this volatility, according to the Best’s Special Report.

Although the recommended changes will help fix various flaws in the existing framework, the potential for greater volatility in the equity market will challenge variable annuity writers. Hedging is not the only answer, but the solutions available are limited, as reinsurance has dropped off, according to the report.

Data from A.M. Best’s supplemental rating questionnaire highlights the status of variable annuity reserve and capital components through 2016 and illustrates the conservative reserving relative to capital that can result under the current framework.

A.M. Best’s SRQ data also tracks the funding status of guaranteed minimum benefit riders attached to variable annuities, and with recent market gains, the guaranteed withdrawal amounts still exceed the account values on hand at year-end 2016 compared with other guaranteed benefits.

The report notes that variable annuity writers have increasingly hedged products with guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits since 2011, but these have the least exposure when compared with three other types of guaranteed minimum benefits. Variable annuity products with guaranteed minimum death benefits remain the most exposed, creating more exposure to mortality risk.

Post-Participation Investing

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Kerry Pechter -

New tax law reveals imbalance in homeownership benefits

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Eugene Steuerle -

By roughly doubling the standard deduction and limiting the deduction from federal taxable income of state and local taxes (SALT), the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) significantly reduced the tax benefits of homeownership, especially for middle-income households.

Not only does it cap the deductibility of state and local taxes, including local property taxes, it also substantially reduces the number of taxpayers who will itemize deductions at all, including those who pay mortgage interest.

As a result, it raises important questions about the future viability of tax subsidies that primarily benefit higher-income taxpayers who own expensive, highly leveraged homes. These changes made homeownership tax subsidies even more upside-down than pre-TCJA tax law and provide a tax incentive to further concentrate the distribution of private wealth.

The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) recently released projections on the future distribution of some of the tax benefits of homeownership. Out of 77 million projected homeowners in 2024, only about one-fifth will make $50,000 or less. Yet, they’ll comprise about half of all households, homeowners and non-homeowners alike.

These taxpayers with annual incomes under $50,000 will get only about one percent (or less than $400 million out of $40 billion) of the overall tax subsidy for home mortgage interest deductions. Meanwhile, households with more than $100,000 of income will garner almost 90% of the subsidy. These estimates for the mortgage interest deductions understate the total value of tax benefits from homeownership. Property tax deductions are also skewed to the rich and the upper-middle class.

At the same time, it is more beneficial to build up home equity largely tax-free than to pay income tax on the returns from money kept in a savings account. This additional incentive also benefits the haves more than the have-nots because it is proportional to the amount of equity a homeowner possesses. So those with a large amount of home equity are far better off than new, usually younger, homeowners who rely heavily on borrowing to purchase a home.

There is something of a paradox to the new tax law, however. The increase in the standard deduction, and the caps on deductions for home mortgage interest and state and local tax payments are all steps that make the overall tax system more progressive. And the reduction in tax incentives probably put a small brake on inflation in the value of housing, making it a bit more affordable for both renters and homeowners.

Still, as a matter of homeownership policy, the result is that only a little over one-tenth of taxpayers—those who will still itemize after the TCJA—will have the opportunity to benefit from most tax subsidies for homeownership. And that will require advocates for extending ownership incentives to more low- and middle-income groups to make the case not simply for better distributing existing tax subsidies but for maintaining any at all. As the increase in the standard deduction shows, there are a lot of ways of promoting progressivity that do not entail subsidizing homeownership.

The case for homeownership subsidies in the tax code and elsewhere rests mainly on the following two grounds:

(1) Homeownership is a way of promoting better citizenship and more stable communities; and

(2) Homeownership helps improve wealth accumulation by nudging many who might not otherwise save to do so by paying off mortgages and making capital improvements on their houses.

The saving argument is one that does apply mainly to low-income and moderate-income households. Homeownership is the primary source of saving for these households, even more important than private retirement saving. If one cares about the uneven distribution of wealth, and related issues of financing retirement for moderate-income households, then encouraging wealth accumulation through housing may be an appealing strategy.

The bottom line: When it comes to homeownership, the TCJA has left the nation with an upside-down tax incentive that applies to only about one-tenth of all households—nearly all of them with high incomes.

Such a design doesn’t pass the laugh test for political sustainability. The new tax law’s crazy remnant of a homeownership tax subsidy should encourage policymakers to rethink housing policy, including tax benefits and direct spending programs for both renters and owners. Given the structure of the TCJA’s tax subsidies, the bar is relatively low for policymakers to find an improvement.

Annuity wholesalers should be consultants for advisors: Global Atlantic

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Editorial Staff -

If annuity issuers want to win hearts and minds in the fee-based advisory world—and they patently do—their wholesalers need to stop pushing one-product solutions for advisors and investors. A recent survey by Global Atlantic Financial Group supports this old (but often forgotten) wisdom.

In a survey of 400 advisors, Global Atlantic whose Forethought Life Insurance unit issues fixed, indexed, variable and income annuities, found that about half (56%) believe annuities are an important part of a retirement plan, with one important caveat.

Of the 56%, about 90% say they would likely increase their use of annuities if they had access to “a multi-product platform and distribution partners who could help select the best strategies based on client objectives.”

The survey findings support Global Atlantic’s position as an annuity company that provides open-ended consultative services to advisors about a variety of annuities, rather than advocating a particular type of annuity.

Global Atlantic also viewed the findings as support for the idea that advisors need to demonstrate objective expertise in a broad range of solutions if they want to be seen as acting in the clients’ best interests, as the new SEC fiduciary proposal requires.

“Advisors need to show clients that they have a full set of solutions at their disposal to meet income planning and retirement savings needs,” said Paula Nelson, president, Retirement at Global Atlantic Financial Group, in a press release. “We see this as a great opportunity considering Global Atlantic’s focus on taking a consultative approach in supporting advisors across all channels.”

Most of the advisors surveyed (57%) said that a multi-product annuity platform “allows for customizable retirement planning based on client need and lifestyle,” and half (51%) acknowledged the simplicity of a single point of contact for multiple product offerings, the survey showed.

In the survey, three-quarters of advisors (76%) said they understand annuities but 62% said their clients don’t. When asked how they educate their clients, 62% of advisors said they spend time to explain product features and answer questions.

About half (53%) use written materials supplied by partners or their company. When asked what would help them better use annuities among clients, 50% said better guidance and education from distribution partners on the differences between products while 46% said they would like the ability to withdraw from the annuity’s value for emergencies. Only 31% cited a desire for fee-based rather than commission-based annuities.

The 2018 Global Atlantic Financial Advisor Survey was completed online by Echo Research in March 2018, among 400 financial advisors who offer portfolio investment and retirement advice that includes annuities. The surveyed financial advisors work at full-service brokerages, wirehouses, banks, registered investment advisors, and independent and regional broker-dealers.

US workers are willing to pay for better retirement benefits

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Editorial Staff -

Most US workers would accept a smaller paycheck for larger employer-provided retirement benefits, according to the 2017 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey by Willis Towers Watson.

Two-thirds of respondents (66%) would be willing to pay more each month for larger, more generous retirement benefits, while 61% would give up more pay for a guaranteed retirement benefit, the survey of nearly 5,000 US employees showed.

Far fewer would make a similar trade-off for health care benefits. Only 38% are willing to pay more each month for a more generous health care plan; 46% are willing to pay more to have lower, more predictable costs when using health care services.

Employees are even less open to paying for tools and services. Fewer than one in four would pay for tools and services that help them live healthier lifestyles (24%) or help improve their finances (19%).

“Employees continue to feel vulnerable about their long-term financial prospects and say they are willing to pay more for greater retirement security,” said Steve Nyce, senior economist, Willis Towers Watson. But on health care “they are basically saying ‘enough is enough.’ Far fewer are willing to pay more each month for more generous health benefits and more predictable costs.”

Employees would like more paid vacation time. Nearly six in 10 employees (58%) would take more time off in exchange for an equivalent change in pay, while the same number would take a more generous retirement plan for an equal change in pay. Just over half (55%) would accept a more generous health care plan in exchange for an equivalent change in pay.

Nearly half (48%) would welcome more financial protection benefits, reflecting a growing interest and need for benefits to help employees address their financial needs. In addition, access to decision support is valued by workers. Nearly nine in 10 employees with benefit choices and access to decision support say their benefit programs meet their needs, which is more than twice that of those without choice.

The 2017 Willis Towers Watson Global Benefits Attitudes Survey examines attitudes toward the health and retirement benefits of over 30,000 private sector employees in 22 countries. A total of 4,983 U.S. workers participated in the survey, which was conducted in July and August 2017.

Auto-escalation begins in the UK, with ‘close monitoring’

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Editorial Staff -

The UK’s experiment with auto-enrollment in workplace defined contribution retirement plans and auto-escalation of minimum contribution for auto-enrolled workers is entering a new stage and getting new scrutiny from the British government, IPE.com reported.

In April, employees’ minimum contributions to auto-enrollment defined contribution (DC) plans rose to 3% of salary from 1%. The employers’ contribution rose to 2% from 1%. The UK government said that it is “closely monitoring” the impact on employers and employees.

Next April, the minimum will rise again to 8% in total, with the employer contribution reaching 3%.

Since auto-enrollment started in 2012, pension participation in the UK has reached record high levels. Auto-enrollment had brought 9.5 million people into pensions, according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics. As of 2017, nearly three-quarters of employees (73%) “had an active workplace pension scheme,” up from less than 47% in 2012, the ONS said.

Malcolm McLean, a senior consultant at Barnett Waddingham, an independent provider of actuarial, administrative and consulting services, warned that any delay to next year’s planned increase would be “a very retrograde step” and that “many commentators have already expressed concern at the low level of minimum contributions required for auto-enrolment purposes.”

“As of yet there appears to be no clear plan to increase them further beyond 8%. Even at this level, for many people, it will not deliver a meaningful pension income at retirement and will call into question the validity of the policy and consumer appreciation of it,” he said.

Nonetheless, the government is “closely monitoring the impact of the increases on both employers and individuals to inform our approach to supporting the second planned increase in contributions from April 2019,” said undersecretary Baroness Buscombe of the Department for Work and Pensions (the UK equivalent of the U.S. Labor Department) in response to a query from the House of Lords.

“There has been a long lead in time to enable employers and individuals to prepare for these increases, with support and communications from the Pensions Regulator and DWP,” Buscombe wrote. “The increased contributions were scheduled to coincide with changes to take-home pay [that] normally take place at the start of the tax year, to help minimize the administrative burden for employers.”

How Canadians regard lifetime income: CANNEX

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Editorial Staff -

Although Canadians may not feel compelled to bolt their front doors at night as carefully as Americans tend to do—as one of Michael Moore’s independent films glibly suggested—they are apparently just as nervous as their southern neighbors that the proverbial wolf might come lurking at their doors during retirement.

Only 45% of Canadians are highly confident that they can maintain their standard of living in retirement until age 85 and 29% aren’t confident about it, according to the second Canadian Guaranteed Lifetime Income Study sponsored by CANNEX Financial Exchanges, a provider of annuity product data and analytics to brokerages and other distributors.

The study was conducted by Greenwald & Associates with support from Sun Life Financial and The Great-West Life Assurance Co.

The percentage of Canadians surveyed who are not confident in their ability to maintain their standard of living until age 90 was 46%, and 58% would expect a decline in their standard of living if they lived to age 95.

Perceptions of annuities

Perceptions around the positives vs. negatives of guaranteed income products are generally consistent between the U.S. and Canada. Two-thirds of respondents value their protection against longevity, peace of mind, and easier budgeting. The top negatives mentioned were: Low access to money, not getting all your money back, difficult to understand, too many terms and conditions, and cost.

Financial advisors are the most common source of information about annuities (24%), followed by financial institutions (18%) and the news media (15%). These numbers are significantly below the U.S. study’s results, reflecting much lower levels of awareness of guaranteed lifetime income products. Consistent with the U.S., the decision to purchase these products is primarily driven by advisor recommendations.

“Among the three-quarters of respondents working with financial advisors, retirement income conversations are largely focused around asset withdrawal, investments with dividends, or fixed income strategies,” said Sam Sivarajan, Senior Vice-President, Wealth Solutions, The Great-West Life Assurance Company. “Guaranteed lifetime income products, more often than not, aren’t part of these discussions.”

Of respondents who have discussed retirement income with an advisor, 44% had a conversation about taking a constant percentage of savings as income. Just 27% said income annuities and 16% said segregated funds were brought up as part of the conversation to provide guaranteed income. Among those who hadn’t discussed retirement income strategies with advisors, 40% reported that income annuities and segregated funds would be of interest.

Although 7 out of 10 individuals who owned guaranteed income products reported being satisfied, and 6 out of 10 considered them to be highly important to their financial security, how the products are labeled matters.

When a guaranteed income product was labeled as an income annuity or segregated fund, 41% reported a lower level of interest, the study showed. The annuity label was less of an issue for respondents than the concept of segregated funds – which few understand. In fact, 67% reported being unfamiliar with segregated funds for guaranteed lifetime income, while 41% said they were unfamiliar with income annuities.

The share of respondents who described guaranteed lifetime income as a “highly valuable supplement to government sponsored retirement plans” rose to 80% from 60% in the first Canadian GLI study conducted in 2015. The results are based on interviews conducted in February 2018 with 1,003 pre-retirees and retirees aged 55-75, with more than $100,000 in investable assets (excludes value of home). The same study has been conducted for the U.S. market annually since 2014.

The study reveals the top retirement concerns of respondents. These include:

Retirement savings not keeping up with inflation (48%)
Low interest rates (47%)
Not earning as much as possible on investments (46%)
Losing money during downturns in the stock market (46%)
Not being able to afford long-term care expenses (45%)
Outliving savings (43%)
Not having money for an emergency (43%)

Only 23% were concerned about their ability to cover basic expenses in retirement for food, rent or utility bills, while about two-thirds were not. In line with the fact that women outlive men on average, 35% of women reported being highly concerned about outliving their retirement savings compared to 20% of men.

Similar to the results of the U.S. study, respondents with lower asset levels and women expressed greater concern about retirement and stronger interest in guaranteed income products.

The findings show more women than men highly value the predictability of supplemental income in planning for their needs. Three-quarters (76%) of women rated guaranteed lifetime income as being highly important to meeting essential expenses in retirement compared to 64% of men.

The majority of pre-retirees expect a substantial cut in income when they retire, and, unlike their U.S. counterparts, Canadians expect the income they receive to decline through retirement. In the U.S., respondents were more optimistic that asset values would continue to grow in retirement.

More expect their highest expenses will occur early in retirement (42%), compared to those (20%) who anticipate them later in retirement. This is the reverse of expectations of those south of the border. Although meeting long- term care needs is a concern, Canadians are clearly less worried about its financial impact at the end of life than their U.S. counterparts.

Lincoln Financial joins the index-linked variable annuity (ILVA) party

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Editorial Staff -

Lincoln National Life, a unit of Lincoln Financial, is the latest life insurer to enter a product into the flourishing category of index-linked variable annuities (ILVAs, aka index-linked structured annuities or “buffered” products).

The new product, Lincoln Level Advantage, is a flexible premium contract with a $25,000 initial premium. It comes in a non-commission-paying Advisory version, a B share and a B class. Unlike most other products of this type, it offers a living benefit option, Lincoln’s unusual i4Life variable income annuity.

In five years, the market for ILVAs has grown from zero to $9.2 billion a year, making it the bright spot in an otherwise dim annuity sales picture. The product offers more upside than a fixed indexed annuity and more downside protection than a variable annuity.

AXA pioneered this type of registered annuity, which works like a structured note. MetLife, Allianz Life, CUNA, Great-West and Great American have followed. Protective is said to have a product in the works.

“The ILVA is reaching a different demographic than a traditional indexed annuity,” said one annuity sales vice president whose company offers an ILVA. “It’s a younger audience.” Because the products are SEC-registered, they also have greater appeal than indexed annuities to wirehouse advisors, he said.

Level Advantage comes in two term lengths, a one-year and a six-year, with three both variable and index-linked investment options. The six-year term has two flavors, one that locks in gains each year and one that doesn’t. In the prospectus, the examples given of performance caps are 7.25% for the one-year term and 82% for the six-year term.

The available indexes are the S&P 500 Index (large-cap), the Russell 2000 Index (small-cap), the MSCI-EAFE Index (global) and Capital Strength Net Fee Index, a 50-security index offered by NASDAQ.

Level Advantage offers buffers against losses, not loss floors. Depending on the term and the type of index used, Lincoln National absorbs the first 10%, 20% or 30% of losses in a given contract year (and every contract owner experiences a different contract year) and the contract owner suffers any net losses beyond the buffer.

For instance, if you have a 10% and your index drops 17% in your contract year, then your account value drops by seven percent. A product with a 10% loss floor would allow the client to lose up to 10% in a year but no more.

In the one-year product, contract owners can get 10% or 100% protection against loss for the S&P 500 Index, and a 10% buffer on the other three indexes. For the six-year product with a point-to-point crediting formula, 10%, 20% and 30% buffers are available for the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000, but only up to 10% for the MSCI-EAFE and Capital Strength Net Fee Index.

For the six-year “Annual Lock” version, only 10% buffers are available. According to the prospectus, “an Indexed Account with Annual Locks is a multi-year account in which the performance is calculated on each Indexed Anniversary Date, but the performance is not credited to or deducted from the Indexed Segment until the End Date.” In other words, each year’s gains or losses are locked in but the accumulated gains do not become available until the end of the term.

There’s a return-of-account value death benefit for 10 basis points per year and a return-of-principal death benefit for 30 basis points per year. The fund operating expenses are listed at 49 basis points per year (with a 120 basis point maximum). The i4Life living benefit rider costs 40 basis points per year.

The variable subaccounts offer the insurance versions of a variety of funds from American Funds, AIM, BlackRock, Fidelity, First Trust, Franklin Templeton, Lincoln and JP Morgan. Investments in these accounts are not protected from loss by buffers and their potential growth isn’t limited by caps.

‘OnePension’ lets employers put DB back in DC

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Editorial Staff -

OneAmerica, the Indianapolis-based mutual insurance company, asset manager and advisory network, has rolled out OnePension, a qualified employer-funded profit-sharing plan that requires employees to convert their balances to “out-of-plan” income annuities when they retire.

“The product doesn’t have the negatives of DB plans, such as minimum funding requirements, actuarial overhead or PBGC (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation) premiums,” Pete Welsh, vice president and managing principal, OneAmerica Retirement Services, told RIJ in an interview this week.

Welsh

“The employer would contribute to a profit-sharing account for each employee,” Welsh said. “The employer and its advisor would then hire an asset manager to manage the contributions collectively. That money keeps growing and at retirement we issue an annuity out of the account balance.” The employee can choose a single life annuity, a joint and survivor annuity or a period-certain annuity.

“We hear employers say that they are legitimately concerned that their employees might outlive their nest eggs. We now have a solution for that. It adds a guaranteed component to the retirement plan without being burdensome. The employer can add the 401(k) component, and when employees separate from service, that’s their money,” Welsh said.

Demand for such a product exists, Welsh said. “We invited some of our bigger plan sponsors in to discuss this,” he told RIJ. “One of the larger employers, the head of a family-owned business, said he’s been paying out about $20 million in profit-sharing to employees every year, but he didn’t think they had the financial acumen to know how best to use the money” for long-term security.

Since OneAmerica doesn’t sell proprietary mutual funds, it is indifferent to the funds that a plan sponsor and plan advisor decide to use in a OnePension plan. “We’re not a 40 Act mutual fund complex,” Welsh said. “We’re open architecture and that makes it simpler for us to offer.”

In terms of its potential for growth, OnePension would have an advantage over traditional DB plans. Someone who participated in OnePension for a limited number of years during the early part of his or her career could benefit from a long period of market appreciation.

“Under the old DB plans, you might earn 8% of final salary for eight years of service ending at age 36, but your average salary wouldn’t change after you left the company,” Welsh said. “If you had a couple of decades left until retirement, your pension would decrease in purchasing power. But with our plan, the money stays in the plan, and if the market goes up, your account would grow and you’d be able to buy more income at retirement.”

OneAmerica has provided retirement plan options through American United Life Insurance Company (AUL) a OneAmerica company, since the 1960s.

OnePension is different from an in-plan guaranteed lifetime income fund or a group variable annuity. As a qualified plan, it allows retirement plan sponsors to invest on behalf of participants.

Products are issued and underwritten by American United Life Insurance Company, a OneAmerica company. Administrative and recordkeeping services are provided by McCready and Keene, Inc. or OneAmerica Retirement Services LLC, companies of OneAmerica which are not broker/dealers or investment advisors.

Lifetime income is not OnePension’s only annuity payout option and the individual should consider with care their specific needs and financial situation prior to annuitizing, a OneAmerica release said.

Honorable Mention

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Editorial Staff -

New financial wellness program from MetLife and Ernst & Young

Starting in the 1980s, “wellness programs” gave white-collar workers a place to shower after their lunchtime jogs. The new “financial wellness” programs may or may not help the average worker escape from debt, but 401(k) vendors increasingly need them just to compete for and retain business.

One of the latest offerings to become available is PlanSmart Financial Wellness, which MetLife co-launched with Ernst & Young LLP and announced in March 2018. It features a “multi-channel experience that focuses on behavioral change” to help employees “build financial literacy, confidence and wellbeing.”

“Employees are struggling when it comes to their finances—MetLife’s 16th Annual U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study (EBTS), released last month, found about half of employees, 46%, feel overwhelmed by financial decisions,” says Meredith Ryan-Reid, senior vice president, Group Benefits, MetLife.

“These concerns can impact other areas of employees’ lives, including their productivity at work. By investing in financial wellness, employers can help their workforce become more engaged and productive.”

Building on MetLife’s PlanSmart workplace financial education program, which has offered workshops and one-on-one consultations for more than 20 years, PlanSmart Financial Wellness offers employees:

Intuitive digital experience: Built by EY technology, the PlanSmart financial wellness website helps employees create a plan to, for instance, pay down debt or plan for retirement, and receive a personalized plan “broken down into bite-sized activities.”

Phone support: EY financial planners offer phone-based financial planning. All guidance is confidential and objective.

In-person guidance: Employees can attend workplace seminars and one-on-one consultations with local MassMutual financial advisors.

The solution’s “smart” platform saves the Employee can save their activity and pick up where they left off when they log back in. Employees also receive checkups and reminders.

eMoney adds lead-generation tool to its advisor platform

For advisors, prospecting is a tougher, more time-consuming challenge than managing money. And getting leads is a big part of prospecting.

So eMoney Advisor, the widely used digital planning tool, is bolstering its advisor wealth management platform with a built-in digital lead generation service called Lead Feed. It’s intended to link up investors and appropriate advisors.

Fidelity Investments purchased eMoneyAdvisor, which has offices in Philadelphia, San Diego and Providence, in 2015 for a reported $250 million.

Lead Feed uses Automated Financial Modeling software created by SmartAsset to run tools and calculators that simulate the decisions associated with buying a home, paying taxes or saving for retirement. The calculators appear next to financial content in online publications and on SmartAsset’s website.

While reading an article about saving for retirement, for instance, web surfers might see a SmartAsset retirement calculator beside the article. They would be invited to use the calculator by answering 20 questions about their personal financial situation and goals. The software would match prospects with appropriate advisors. Such factors as location, licensing, certifications and client asset level would presumably inform the software–eMoney doesn’t say.

Other eMoney business development tools are Lead Capture, an interactive, goal-based simulation that advisors post on their personal websites and online channels, and Advisor Branded Marketing, a digital marketing toolkit that includes content assets such as videos, newsletters, email campaigns and social media posts.

Planned enhancements include access for enterprise users and the integration of Lead Feed into eMoney’s advisor dashboard to further streamline the client acquisition process.

VALIC and RetireUp partner on ‘Retirement Pathfinder’

VALIC, an AIG company and a retirement plan provider for not-for-profit institutions, has partnered with RetireUp, a retirement planning software for financial advisors, to launch Retirement Pathfinder.

The retirement planning tool enables VALIC’s 1,300 financial advisors to provide scenarios designed to educate and inform clients through a variety of models. Since launching the software last year, VALIC financial advisors have created over 44,000 personal retirement income financial plans.

The web-based portal is designed to simplify complex financial matters through informative graphics, educational materials and more.

“While most advisors rely on static questionnaires to better understand clients’ specific income needs, Retirement Pathfinder is dynamic and boasts software that allows for ad-hoc changes and a host of different scenarios. Complex data is analyzed quickly, allowing clients to understand the entire retirement picture and then use tools and take steps to address personal needs,” a VALIC release said.

The tool can help determine a client’s essential lifestyle needs, discretionary lifestyle needs and the remaining income gap. Advisors can then create personal financial plans for their clients.

Retirement Pathfinder explains a variety of investment options, including annuities, in clear, simple terms.

Since launching the tool in March of 2017, Retirement Pathfinder has proven to be a strong complement to VALIC’s comprehensive, fully holistic financial planning tool – VALIC’s Financial 360.

This Is Worse than the Fiduciary Rule

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Kerry Pechter -

With the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to vacate the Obama fiduciary rule on May 7, the securities, life insurance and retirement industries had effectively thwarted a big threat to their product distribution model. But, based on what I’ve heard at industry conferences, they’re not uniformly satisfied with their victory. That’s no surprise. The Obama Department of Labor was the messenger, not the cause, of industry’s problems.

“It’s as if the rule never existed,” attorney Steve Saxon of the Groom Law Group said last week at the Insured Retirement Industry conference. But, as he and others have conceded in public in recent weeks, the issues that inspired the rule still exist. As the thrill of victory subsides, they’re reacquainting themselves with the headaches of playing a game without clear rules.

The incestuous, over-priced business model they defended is obsolete anyway. Brokers continue to migrate from the commission-based world to the fee-based advisor world. The law still requires intermediaries to be “prudent” and act in clients’ “best interest.” Technology continues to commoditize what they do and squeeze their margins. Index funds still crowd-out active funds. The conflicts of interest inherent in third-party payments for distribution still make investors distrust them.

At retirement conferences, discussions about certain elements of the Obama rule have bordered on the nostalgic. Some IT departments and business units who spent millions of dollars adapting their technology to the rule are said to resist reversing their improvements. The guidelines for marketing IRAs to 401(k) plan participants are said to be muddy again. Brokerages have to go back to using the obsolete “five-part test” to distinguish salespeople from advisors; but the test doesn’t fit today’s fluid, multi-licensed advisory practices.

So far, neither the DOL, the SEC, the federal courts nor the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has replaced the Obama rule with anything more palatable to the financial industry or as appealing to consumer groups. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision ignored 40 years of change in the way America saves for retirement. The Field Assistance Bulletin that the Department of Labor said it wouldn’t enforce the Obama rule, but that created new confusion. The Securities & Exchange Commission’s “best interest” proposal, now open to public comment, aroused little enthusiasm. New York and other states now threaten to create a patchwork of five or six different state fiduciary standards. In a May 14 podcast, attorney Fred Reish of the firm of Drinker Biddle said, “We’re in the middle of a mess.”

Where the rule came from

The seeds for the 2017 fiduciary rule, or at least some of them, were planted 20 years ago, when several major life insurance companies decided to demutualize, cut costs, demobilize their captive agent forces, and rely on third-party distribution. But third-party marketing and distribution was not cheap; fund companies had to pay for shelf space at brokerages and insurers had to pay competitive commissions to independent insurance agents.

Those payments posed a conflict of interest for the intermediaries. The advisors’ interests naturally aligned with the parties who paid them—the product manufacturers. “A” shares were replaced by manufacturer-financed “B” shares. The manufacturers’ subsequent recovery of those acquisition costs from clients had to be engineered into products. As a result, products became more complex and less transparent.

The Obama DOL didn’t invent this problem, or the blurring of designations in the financial world. Brokers and insurance agents, supposedly limited to making one-off recommendations, taking orders and executing transactions for self-directed investors, have created a raft of titles designed to suggest that they provide trustworthy advice. More confusingly, one person, with the right licenses and designations, can switch hats and adopt the role that works best from a compensation or regulatory standpoint. Studies showed that investors are blind to these distinctions.

The DOL didn’t invent the transition from defined benefit to defined contribution, which turned savers into investors and retirees into their own pension fund managers. It didn’t create equity-linked insurance products, which straddle the insurance and investment worlds. Nor did it attach living benefit riders to annuities and create a new class of personal pensions.

Most importantly, no one foresaw the unintended consequences of rollovers, which allows trillions of dollars of tax-deferred savings to move into a regulatory grey zone between the DOL and the SEC. It didn’t invent the blurring of education and marketing by recordkeepers when participants prepared to change jobs and became candidates for rollovers. It didn’t invent the vast differences between the 401(k) world and the rollover IRA world.

When they execute a rollover, all those newbie investors who grew up in the captivity of the 401(k) plan have to learn how to survive in the (relative) wilderness of the brokerage world. They’ll have more options, but they will be slow to discover that the prices will be higher and standards of conduct lower. Prior to the fiduciary rule, the brokerage world openly celebrated the rollover trend as a “bonanza”: Trainloads of dumb money were coming to town.

For consumerist policymakers in the Obama administration, this was not a bonanza; it was a train wreck. The DOL recognized that the 401(k) had replaced DB and risen in importance for retirement security, that the tax-deferral subsidy has helped fatten 401(k) accounts, and that the 401(k) system was in danger of becoming a mere incubator for rollover IRA brokerage accounts whose higher fees would devour the beneficial effect of tax deferral.

Tax-deferral was in danger of becoming an industry subsidy, not a saver’s subsidy. This is what prompted the creation of the rule. The DOL’s attempt to clarify these problems was flawed. It was also a deep threat to the manufacturer-financed product distribution system. But it was not, as the Fifth Circuit judges labeled it, “arbitrary and capricious.”

E unum pluribus

A problematic vacuum now exists. The conflicts and ambiguities are still there but there’s still no promising remedy in sight. Neither the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Securities & Exchange Commission, or the Trump DOL has so far brought the kind of clarity to the situation that businesses and legal departments need.

In the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which vacated the DOL rule on May 7, the two majority judges either didn’t know or didn’t care that the financial world has changed. They asserted that “only in DOL’s “semantically-created world do salespeople and insurance brokers have “authority” or “responsibility” to “render investment advice” and that the Fiduciary Rule “improperly dispenses with [the] distinction… between investments advisors, who were considered fiduciaries, and stockbrokers and insurance agents, who generally assumed no such status in selling products to their clients.”

This statement contradicts my first-hand knowledge of the industry. The two judges did not seem to recognize that the DOL was addressing, not imagining, the disappearance of that distinction. In discussing commissions, the judges seemed to think that they’re used only in one-off transactions of little consequence.

They didn’t appear to recognize that an insurance agent can recommend a $100,000 indexed annuity contract with a long surrender period, a lifetime income benefit and a $7,000 commission that’s hidden in the annuity payout rates and still pretend that he’s not giving long-term advice. Abuses in the commissioned sales of annuities to IRA owners are real, not “semantically created.”

The long-awaited SEC staff’s proposal for a “best interest” standard, released on April 18, doesn’t represent much progress either. It said little if anything about insurance products. I watched the hearing where the commissioners reviewed it. Even the four (out of five) who approved it did so with reservations or without enthusiasm. Commissioner Michael Piwowar criticized its vagueness. “This proposal imposes on broker-dealers a new ‘best interest’ standard. This sounds simple enough.”

But “the devil is truly in the details,” he added. “This ‘best interest’ standard is wholly different from the well-established Investment Adviser’s Act fiduciary standard and FINRA’s suitability standard. Unfortunately, after 45 days of reviewing and commenting on this release, I am not convinced that we have clearly and adequately explained the exact differences. This lack of clarity is worrisome.”

At the IRI conference, attorney James F. Jorden said that as a litigator who defends financial services companies, he saw potential legal vulnerability in the SEC’s suggestion that advisors must use “prudence” in dealing with clients.

In the law, he said, prudence usually implies fiduciary responsibility, and not the weaker definition of best interest that the industry hopes for from the SEC. Meanwhile, the SEC will soon lose two of its five commissioners, which will stall action. The Trump administration is not expected to be quick to replace them.

The Trump DOL’s recent Field Assistance Bulletin created more questions than it answered. In advising brokerages that it would not enforce the fiduciary rule, it implied that the rule still exists. “The FAB is somewhat difficult to understand,” said a Wagner Law Group assessment of the bulletin. At the IRI conference, Drinker Biddle attorney Brad Campbell, a former assistant Secretary of Labor, said, “Labor is not the primary ball carrier. There’s nothing on the DOL agenda about the rule. It’s kind of embarrassing. There’s almost nothing on it that’s new in the retirement space. I would have hoped that we would see a more robust policy agenda in the second year of the Trump administration.”

To the dismay of many in the retirement industry, individual state regulators are jumping into the regulatory vacuum where the DOL fiduciary rule used to be. The potential for the emergence of a patchwork of many fiduciary standards is a source of industry concern. The State of New York “has proposed a standard that is very tough on annuities and life insurance,” said Seth Harris, a former Acting Secretary of Labor, at the IRI conference. “The likeliest outcome is that you will get an SEC rule, and then you will have six or seven different state standards of conduct. That will be a big problem for carriers.”

Nature abhors a vacuum, it is said. And so does the financial services industry. But by defeating the Obama fiduciary rule, it has created a vacuum, and there’s no telling what might happen next.

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Where the rule came from

E unum pluribus

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