La Vida Robo
After MIT and a stint at Merrill Lynch, Carlos Garcia decided to start Finhabits, the first bilingual English and Spanish robo-advisor and savings tool. It's for first-time savers. It's...
The Bucket Brigade
Time-segmentation stands at the intersection of insurance and investments, of modern portfolio theory and asset/liability matching, and of behavioral finance and quantitative analysis.
The ‘Coverage War’ Begins
Half of Americans have no way to save for retirement at work. But who will help them: private companies, state governments, or a combination of the two?
A Social Security Trial Balloon
A modest proposal: Add 2% to the payroll tax to fund individual accounts that retirees could live on while they delay claiming Social Security until age 70.
With FIA Caps, Higher is Better
CANNEX, the real-time annuity rate provider, has published a study that compares hypothetical fixed indexed annuity returns with the returns of multi-year guaranteed rate annuities. Cannex recently added FIAs...
LIMRA Ponders the Annuity Puzzle
'We can stick with business as usual, or we can work with regulators to remove some of the hurdles to selling annuities,' said Ernst & Young's Doug French at...
Retirement Wonks and Honky-Tonks
Having stopped Congress from cutting tax breaks for savers in December's tax bill, the American Retirement Association celebrated with three-days of reflection and revelry in Nashville.
Little Love for SEC ‘Best Interest’ Proposal
Having kicked the fiduciary can for two decades, the SEC has finally done something. But it didn't seem to do much--or, more importantly, enough--to define the phrase "best interest."
An Income Strategy for a Couple with $200K
Joe Tomlinson, an advisor who often recommends immediate annuities in income plans, takes a different tack in his plan for a hypothetical couple, both age 65.
‘Peeps’ Try to Peck Through a Pension Shell
A Pennsylvania maker of colored marshmallow ‘chicks’ wants to be the first company in a ‘closed MEP’ pension plan to stay in the plan but put all new hires...
Should My Neighbor Buy that Indexed Annuity?
My 60-year-old friend went to a free retirement seminar and met an investment advisor who recommended that she move 60% of her savings into a fixed indexed annuity for...
A Pre-ICO Lunch at Gibraltar
I rented a Fiat 500 and drove to Gibraltar for a mid-day meal with Dean McClelland, the creator of TontineTrust, a retirement income product based on crypto-currency.
It’s Hot Around the ‘Collar’
Nervous investors can get an indexed collar strategy from an annuity or an ETF. Great West Financial and Innovator Capital Management have new products in the category. Cap-and-buffer products,...
No surrender penalty on Jackson National’s new advisory FIA
The MarketProtector's IncomeAccelerator living benefit ratchets up the client's annual withdrawal rate for each year when no withdrawals are taken.
Float shrink: US firms continue to buy stock
New cash takeovers have totaled $48.1 billion, and they have would have been $136.9 billion had Broadcom’s bid for Qualcomm succeeded, said TrimTabs research.
Hold the Parade
Annuity industry advocates say that this week's Fifth District Court of Appeals ruling has nullified the DOL fiduciary rule. Others disagree. I question Judge Jones' understanding of how the...
In Canada, ‘LIFE’ Begins at 85
Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald (right or below), a research fellow at Toronto's Ryerson University, proposes a voluntary, tontine-like deferred income annuity called Lifetime Income for the Elderly (LIFE). Canadians could make...
‘We Shall Never Surrender!’
At the Insured Retirement Industry's marketing conference in Orlando this week, speakers from AXA, Brighthouse Financial (formerly MetLife’s retail division), Great-West Financial, Jackson National Life, and New York Life...
‘Circuit Split’ over DOL Fiduciary Rule?
In my opinion, allowing IRA rollover money to escape the protections and restrictions that govern 401(k) plans will eventually nullify the federal government’s rationale for tax deferral—a benefit that...
