A ‘Nesting Doll’ of an In-Plan Annuity
ARS, State Street Global Advisors, Nationwide, Athene, Transamerica and Global Trust Company have brought to market the State Street GTC Retirement Income Builder, a target date fund with a...
Here Come the Suits
Close observers of the 'Bermuda Triangle' strategy weren't surprised when class action lawsuits were filed against AT&T, State Street Global Advisors and Lockheed Market for their choice of Athene...
Life Insurers as LEGO Monsters
Michael Gordon, CEO of Axonic Insurance, part of Axonic Capital, sees the future of the life/annuity/asset-management business as an increasingly a la carte affair, where the components of the...
Meet the Newest Platform in the 401(k) Annuity Space
'We’re a product design firm,' ALEXIncome co-founder E. Graham Clark told RIJ. 'We feel we’ve built the best process for integrating annuities into retirement accounts.'
Two retirement experts launch a planning start-up
“By clarifying how investment volatility and an unknown lifespan impact spending, IncomePath allows a client to select the right combination of investment risk, portfolio withdrawals, and annuity income,” Michael...
This Year’s Legal Battles
The life/annuity industry faces three big legal issues this year. All stem from, or are complicated by, the patchwork regulation of financial products in the US, our out-of-date pension...
NAIC Urged to Limit ‘Bermuda Triangle’ Strategy
'The ability of insurers to significantly lower the total asset requirement for long-duration blocks of business that rely heavily on asset returns appears to be one of the drivers...
Fidelity’s Plan Sponsors Can Now Offer Annuities
Income products issued by MetLife, Pacific Life, Prudential Financial and Western & Southern Financial Group are available on the Fidelity platform, with additional insurers to be added in the future, Fidelity said in its...
‘Sticking to the Plan’ While Taking Income
Pension Plus is a recent entry in the race to sell decumulation tools to 401(k) plan sponsors. Shlomo Benartzi, the behavioral finance expert, conceived it. Retirement industry veteran Mike...
We’re Baaaaaaaaack
Too much is happening in the retirement industry to ignore. So I'm planning to publish RIJ once a month, nine times a year, while spending the rest of my...
Iceland’s Tiny But Great Collective DC Plan
I visited Iceland in mid-2022 to interview pension experts in Reykjavik, the capital city and to fish for brown trout in the rivers near Akureyri, a harbor town on...
Of Athene, Pension Risk Transfers, and Fiduciaries
The ERISA Advisory Council recently heard comments on changing the criteria that fiduciaries use when vetting annuity providers in pension risk transfer deals. Athene's vice chairman defended his company's...
RIJ’s Next Phase
In the near future, I plan to turn the RIJ website into a free library of information on retirement income planning. Before then, I hope to revise 'Annuities for...
Why Annuity Issuers Use Bermuda Reinsurance
Reinsurance helps life insurers transfer risk and release capital. But when it's internal--between affiliates--and the reinsurer is offshore, it's hard to tell if the deal is real or just...
How Annuity Risks Get Passed to the Bermuda Triangle
Leading private equity-linked fixed indexed annuity (FIA) issuers ceded the risk (the liability) of 95% of their 2021 sales to the balance sheets of affiliated or co-owned reinsurers located...
You Can’t Eat Your Own Head
The US faces an unsustainable fiscal imbalance of about $250 trillion over eternity, says an econometrics think tank. For several reasons, the analysis doesn't worry me.
The Bear That Ate My Grandfather
When I saw on Bloomberg that the stock market had fallen into "bear market territory," I paid a little attention, but not much. I know the worst that a...
A New Kind of RIJ is on the Way
Over the next few months, I plan to redesign the site. My goal will be to make the material that I’ve written and collected since April 2009 more accessible...
Annuities are Sorely Misunderstood
About 97% of all annuities sold are deferred annuities. I think of them more as tax-deferred, principal-protected investments than as personal pensions in retirement. Most people don't know the difference.
NAIC Reassures Congress on Private Equity-Led Insurers
Responding to Sen. Sherrod Brown's March inquiry, the association of state insurance commissioners gave high marks to their own oversight of PE-linked life/annuity companies. But the NAIC's 'nothing...
