Different Floors, Different Ceilings
MetLife and Allianz Life have applied for SEC approval of annuity contracts that offer risk-return trade-offs similar to AXA Equitable Life’s successful Structured Capital Strategies product.
Big Blue Longevity Dots
For Prudential Financial’s 30-second Super Bowl ad, its agency built a scoreboard-sized wall in a park in Austin, Texas and recruited hundreds of random Texans to post pie-sized blue...
CDAs and the Law
Contingent deferred annuities (CDAs) are on the minds of insurers these days and took up a fair portion of yesterday’s seminar on securities products of insurance companies at the...
Five Questions to Ask about DIAs
If you’re determined to think of DIAs as investments, they’re probably not for you. But if you think of them as insurance against longevity risk, they can make sense...
How TOPS Avoids Bottoms
2012 was the first full year of performance of a managed volatility strategy designed by Milliman for TOPS Protected Portfolios and used in Ohio National, Nationwide and Minnesota Life...
Three New Annuities to Ring in 2013
Rates may still be low, but annuity products keep coming off the assembly line. American General has a new deferred income annuity, Security Benefit a new fixed indexed annuity...
With a Name Like Golden, You’d Better Be Good
Actuary Jerry Golden is always up to something. Now he has a new retail business, called Savings2Income, which offers mass-affluent retirees three ways to create retirement income.
New Kids on the Blocks
What happens when Wall Street dealmakers who are in business to make a killing enter the life insurance industry, where people are traditionally in business to make a living?
England’s Search for a DC/DB Hybrid
The U.K.’s pension ministry has proposed ‘defined ambition’ as a remedy for the country’s retirement savings ills. ‘DA’ is a hybrid of DC and DB, but remains otherwise undefined....
Of Burn Rates and Funding Ratios
Setting a “safe” withdrawal rate is a great way to start taking retirement income, but advisors should monitor their clients’ “funding ratios” and “burn rates” to gauge the sustainability...
Lobbying 101
Retirement industry trade groups don’t want deficit hawks to reduce the tax incentives for retirement savings. Last week’s Senate resolution affirming the status quo was a result of their...
Rate Expectations
At a time when low interest rates are pinching off the annuity industry’s oxygen supply—not to mention starving bond investors and crippling pensions—a Columbia University economist's rationale for raising...
The Worst Time to Retire? At a Market Peak.
People like to retire during a bull market. But when stock prices revert to their long-term averages, they find themselves high and dry, like boaters stranded on a sand...
Guardian Weathers the Storm
Guardian Life VP Douglas Dubitsky talks about the mutual insurer's variable annuity sales growth and how guaranteed income can “free an advisor to be an advisor again.”
MetLife’s VA Sales are Missed
Total annuity sales are down for the quarter and the first nine months of the year, according to LIMRA. If not for MetLife’s pull-back, variable annuity sales would be...
The Four Kinds of Financial Advisors
In a presentation at The Wharton School this year, fee-only planners Paula Hogan and Rick Miller suggested that advisors be aware of the professional “paradigm” that they use when...
Traitor VIX
Volatility is the most treacherous risk for VA issuers, and complex hedging strategies are the answer. That’s the view from the Equity-Based Insurance Guarantees conference in Chicago this week.
VA closures, buy-backs send wrong message: SEC
The director of the SEC Division of Investment Management said VA issuers seem to be telling investors, ‘Here is the deal we are offering you, unless we find out...
Russell Up Some Income
Two weeks ago we wrote about "Someday Rich," the new book from Russell Investments. This week's topic is Russell's Retirement Lifestyle Solution, a decumulation strategy that combines systematic withdrawal,...
DFA Gives Managed Accounts a New Dimension
“For as long as I’ve known him, David Booth has had a desire to find a way to improve retirement for everyone, not just people who have millions of...
