Great-West Financial’s no-commission Smart Track Advisor variable annuity (VA) is now available to registered investment advisors (RIAs) on Aria’s RetireOne platform, where fee-based advisors can get help evaluating their clients’ existing VA contracts and exchange them for better or cheaper contracts.
In a side note, RetireOne CEO David Stone told RIJ that selling stand-alone living benefits—lifetime income guarantees unbundled from mutual funds—to RIAs to wrap around their own sets of investments “remains a core part of what we do. We are in development of some new SALB-type products to be launched in early 2018.”
Great-West describes Smart Track Advisor as “a low-cost dual-strategy variable annuity” with these benefits:
- More than 90 investment subaccounts
- Ability to delay adding the living benefit rider after issue to keep costs down until guaranteed income is needed
- Withdrawal rates as high as 6% at age 65 for life
- Single and joint riders for the same cost
- Ability to choose single or joint income
- Multiple ways to increase income after withdrawals start – including age band income resets
Smart Track Advisor allows advisors to bill for their advisory fee separately or have the fee (up to 1.50%) deducted from the annuity contract without disrupting any guarantees.
The guaranteed living and death benefits offered are similar to those on Great-West Financial’s comparable commission-paying B-share product, Smart Track II – 5 Year Suite. Advisors can choose the share class and fee structure that meets each client’s needs.
Recently, Barron’s ranked Smart Track Advisor as the top traditional variable annuity for tax-deferred investing, Great-West said in its release.
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