Fidelity & Guaranty Life’s FIA sales doubled in fiscal 2014
Harbinger's CEO and chairman, Philip Falcone (in photo) will resign Dec. 1, to focus on HC2 Holdings and Harbinger Capital Partners. He will depart with a bonus of $20.5...
Competitiveness of U.S. public equity markets called ‘weak’
U.S. share of global IPOs by foreign companies sits at 9.0%, continuing the trend of foreign companies avoiding U.S. equity markets. This measure remains far below the average...
A VA with a little bit of everything, from Principal
The product has a current M&E fee of 1%. Fund expense ratios range from a low of 0.65% to a high of 2.63%.
Vanguard continues to dominate fund in-flows
Vanguard funds saw inflows of $17.45 billion in October and $165.4 billion for the first ten months of 2014. YTD, Dimensional Fund Advisors was second with $24.4 billion.
The staid world of Dutch pensions is evolving: ABP
Government, education and civil service pension ABP, which has 2.8 million participants in a country of less than 17 million, pointed to trends in the Netherlands that may...
Canadians feel as insecure about retirement as we do
LIMRA's new report, 'Ready, Set, Retire? Not So Fast!... Revisited: A Canadian Consumer Retirement Study,' is a follow-up to two previous studies that LIMRA conducted in Canada.
Indexed and deferred income annuity sales shine in 3Q2014: LIMRA
Deferred income annuity (DIA) sales reached $670 million in the third quarter, 21% higher than the prior year, according to LIMRA's Secure Retirement Institute. In the first nine months...
Life/annuity stocks struggle as low interest rates persist: A.M. Best
With an appreciation of 7.6%, Voya Financial, Inc. was the best performing life/annuity stock in the third quarter of 2014, according to A.M. Best. With a share price decline...
MetLife, Fidelity partner on new VA with return-of-premium guarantee
The annual mortality and expense risk charge for the product is 0.70% and the rider fee is 1.15%. The contract owners also pay 0.83% per year for the underlying...
Wink reports on 3Q2014 indexed annuity, indexed life sales
Allianz Life led FIA sales with a market share of 26.80%, followed by American Equity Companies, Security Benefit Life, Great American Insurance Group, and Athene USA. Allianz Life’s Allianz...
The Bucket
Brief or late-breaking items from Fitch Ratings, Cerulli Associates and Strategic Insight.
Lincoln Financial enhances its deferred income annuity
The enhancements to the contract do not include any features made possible by the federal government’s Qualifying Longevity Annuity Contract announcements this year, a Lincoln spokesman said.
Eaton Vance gets SEC approval for ‘managed ETFs’
The SEC has just approved a request to list and trade exchange-traded managed funds on NASDAQ, and has issued a notice of intent to grant exemptive relief to permit...
Annuity owners are more confident: LIMRA
Among households with more than $1 million in assets, 44% percent of annuity owners say they are “very confident” of a secure retirement compared to 35% of non-annuity owners,...
Banks Earn Record First-Half Annuity Income
Second-quarter 2014 annuity commissions reached $916.8 million, the second-highest quarterly mark on record, according to the Michael White Bank Annuity Fee Income Report.
American Funds, Vanguard popular among DC asset managers
A new Cogent Report evaluates the competitive positions of 47 leading DC investment managers on a variety of metrics, including identifying those that plan sponsor advisors have recently started...
Symetra adds enhanced death benefit to Edge Pro FIA
The new rider is “designed to provide beneficiaries with a potentially larger death benefit than they would otherwise receive from an annuity contract,” said a Symetra release.
Life insurers grasp for yield, with mixed success: Conning
A new Conning study, “Life Insurance Industry Investments: Added Risk in 2013,” analyzes life industry investments for the period 2009-2013.
MassMutual settles part of excessive fee lawsuit for $9.5 million
MassMutual has settled its lawsuit with Goldenstar retirement plan participants, which accused the retirement plan provider of violating its fiduciary responsibilities when it received revenue-sharing payments from asset managers...
“Neuromarketing” research can improve participant communications
“Rather than warn how important saving for a pension is, we should emphasize how people who save can enjoy their pension later on," said Joyce Vonken, a marketing intelligence...
