Post-Election Overhang
Despite recent court rulings, Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Labor leaves some room for uncertainty over the future of rollover-related ERISA regulation.
‘Reinsurance Sidecars’: A Capital Idea
Athene Annuity & Life sold the most fixed deferred annuities in the first three-quarters of 2024. Its parent, Athene Holdings, has attracted billions in just-in-time third-party capital through Bermuda...
‘Asset-intensive’ annuity reinsurance has NAIC’s attention
At an Oct. 24 meeting, the NAIC's Life Actuarial Task Force (LATF) continued to hammer out a new guideline for 'asset adequacy testing' of offshore reinsurance reserves. Starting in...
How ‘Demutualization’ Changed Everything, Part II
With demutualization, a life insurer went from being a cooperative aimed at providing its owner-customers with insurance at cost, to being a diversified financial corporation aimed at maximizing value...
An Odd Couple: Trump Visits My Half-Latino Town
Annuity sales are at an all-time high. Equity indexes are at all-time highs. Inflation has tapered, interest rates are favorable to life insurance companies, and unemployment is still low....
Middleware is Central to In-Plan Annuities
Middleware is hub-and-spoke software that lets retirement plan recordkeepers and life insurers talk to each other. Steve McCoy of iJoin, a provider of managed account user interfaces, and Bill...
How T. Rowe Price Approaches the ‘401(k) Income’ Market
By bundling a deferred income annuity with a managed payout program, T. Rowe Price's optional 'out-of-plan' 401(k) income tool aims to boost participants' spending power in retirement by as...
Test Your ‘401(k) Annuity’ Math Skills
Should 401(k) participants pay fees on annuity benefits they don't know they have, and never use? Are 'in-plan' annuity fees 'fixed' if the issuer can change the benefit crediting...
The Feeling Was De-Mutual
In the 1990s and early 2000s, a wave of household-name mutual life insurers “demutualized” and become stock companies. The conversion was driven by fundamental changes in the U.S. economy...
Lessons from Britain’s national ‘NEST’ egg program
NEST is the U.K.'s experiment with a government-sponsored, portable defined contribution plan for low- and middle-income workers at small companies. Most NEST participants are still far from retirement, but...
Why 401(k) Plan Sponsors Remain Wary of Annuities
The SECURE Act of 2019 did too little, too soon, in opening up 401(k) plans to all kinds of annuities. Some big 401(k) plans are ready to offer in-plan...
‘If you’re not talking about it, you’re not winning’
'The topic of retirement income is a relevant discussion for J.P. Morgan to have, even if it doesn’t turn out to be a big asset gatherer for them,' said...
J.P. Morgan Asset Mgt Joins the 401(k) Annuity Race
To educate participants, JPMAM's ‘My Retirement Income Planner,' an online tool for 401(k) participants, will help them decide whether to cover 25% of their plan savings with an...
British regulators scrutinize ‘FundedRe’ in pension deals
The Prudential Regulatory Authority, the Bank of England's financial regulatory arm, told UK life insurers in late July that it has concerns about the use of 'funded reinsurance' (FundedRe)...
RIJ Launches the 401(k) Income Research Center
RIJ intends to give plan sponsors, plan advisors, retirement plan service providers and others an up-to-date, easy-to-access source of curated information and competitive intelligence on products and processes that...
Recurring Idea: Give the ‘Tax Expenditure’ to the Poor
The Penn Wharton Budget Model, a group that assesses new spending programs, calculates that, if the US Treasury eliminated the tax deduction for contributions to retirement plans, it could...
Should Participants Get Lifetime Income By ‘Default’?
The ERISA Advisory Council heard testimony on whether to tweak the rules for Qualified Default Investment Alternatives to accommodate—or exclude—annuities. Advisors to 401(k) plans should read this.
What Recordkeepers Think about 401(k) Annuities
The Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association (DCIIA), a Washington, DC-based trade group, recently conducted a survey of recordkeepers to measure their progress toward facilitating income options in 401(k) plans.
DOL Lets Pension Risk Transfer Rules Stand – For Now
But the Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration still has concerns about 'insurers’ ownership structures; exposure to risky assets... and use of affiliated and offshore reinsurance.'
The Bermuda Triangle’s 1980s Roots
There are clear similarities between the business scheme that brought down Executive Life Insurance Co. in 1991 and the 'Bermuda Triangle' strategy that many US life/annuity companies use.
