Honorable Mention
Brief or late-breaking items from LifeYield, Northwestern Mutual and Envestnet | Retirement Solutions, Lincoln Financial, AICPA, and Mercer.
New issue of Journal of Retirement appears
The new issue contains articles by Wade Pfau, Joe Tomlinson and Steve Vernon; John Turner, Andrew Biggs, and other eminent retirement researchers.
Target Date Funds: What’s Under the Hood?
TDF investment returns, on average, fall short of their benchmark indices but perform about the same as all other mutual funds, say the authors of a new brief from...
‘Focus on issues in your direct control,’ A.M. Best urges annuity issuers
The '2017 Review & Preview Best’s Special Report' notes that the ratings agency has revised its outlook for 2017 on the L/A industry from stable to negative.
Honorable Mention
Brief or late-breaking items from Edward Jones, Hanlon Investment Management, Pantheon and Transamerica/Aegon.
TIAA offers double-shot of income solutions for DC plans
Plan sponsors and/or their third-party consultants select the investment options and design the glide paths formulas for their TDFs and combine them with one of two income solutions on...
Jackson issues fee-based version of popular Elite Access VA
Elite Access as a B-share VA was first issued in 2012, when advisors were hungry for access to so-called liquid alternative assets. Its sales through the first three quarters...
Index and ETF providers dominate fund flows in 2016: Morningstar
December 2016 saw overall outflows from alternative strategies of $4.4 billion, with full-year outflows of $4.7 billion. This marked the worst showing for alternative funds since 2005.
Interest rate drought not over: A.M. Best
'While aggregated industry bond portfolio yields have consistently declined to 4.71% in 2015 from 4.88% in 2014 and 4.99% in 2013, strategic investment decisions have helped mitigate further declines...
Fifth Third Bank acquires The Retirement Corporation of America
The Retirement Corporation of America provides 'education platforms, lifestyle focused events and investment programs designed to help maximize post-retirement income.'
Transamerica’s statement on its new no-commission VA with income benefits
'Transamerica has built the Variable Annuity I-Share (and all of our products) with an intent to be fully compliant with existing regulations and the coming DOL fiduciary regulations,' wrote...
Northwestern Mutual starts $50 million fintech venture fund
Investments will range from $500,000 to $3 million. The insurer will focus on"digitizing internal capabilities" rather so-called robo-advice per se.
More than one-in-four seniors never expect to be debt-free
Among people age 65 and older, 28% said they 'never expect to get out of debt.' (In late 2015, 35% felt that way.)
LOMA issues ‘Forecast for the Life Insurance Industry’
'We would expect under two percent growth in North America, with larger single-digit growth in the developing world,' said Tom Scales, research director, Celent and a contributor to the...
A.M. Best forecasts life insurance industry M&A
Disruption from financial technology, or fintech, companies in the industry likely will drive strategically focused M&A activity, A.M. Best predicted.
NextCapital to provide robo-advice to John Hancock plans
NextCapital and John Hancock will roll out the new digital advice solution across the John Hancock Retirement Plan Services business over the next 12 months.
Vanguard establishes behavioral research center
The Center for Investor Research “will examine how investors make decisions through observational studies based on Vanguard's administrative data and the growing pool of digital interactions,” the Malvern, PA-based...
America’s 20 best online stockbrokers and robo-advisors: NerdWallet
The online credit-card rating site names some of its favorite fintech players.
Tilting at windmills
A Danish pension fund's investment in American wind farms looked like a safe diversification bet--until the prevailing price of electricity in Texas dropped by more than 50%.
Goodbye “Obamania.” Hello, er, “Trumpelstiltskin”?
Puns, portmanteau words and neologisms--especially those incorporating the name Trump--dominated Investopedia's annual list of financial terms whose meanings were sought most often on the information site.
