Obama’s Budget Too Austere for Retirement Industry
There’s outrage and indignation over the administration’s call for a $3 million cap on lifetime accumulations in tax-favored accounts, but only a tiny number of accounts would be affected.
Pick and Roll(over)
Hundreds of TV ads for financial services have appeared during the 2013 NCAA men's basketball tournament so far. None was an absolute slam dunk, but all were good. Read...
VA Net Flows ‘Grim’ in 4Q 2012: Morningstar
“A spike in outflows from group contracts and continued large outflows from companies that have exited the business were the major components of the precipitous drop," wrote Morningstar's Frank...
Where the Wealth Is
Do you build and wholesale financial products? Cerulli reports that the giant wirehouse channel shrank slightly last year, to the benefit of the fast-growing RIA and dually-registered advisor channels.
Cutting Longevity Tail Risk Down to Size
In a white paper published last month, Milliman actuaries describe a design for a mini defined benefit plan that a plan sponsor could tuck inside a defined contribution plan...
The Best Retirement Research of 2012
For the second consecutive year, we bring you the most intriguing, influential and useful retirement-related academic research that came to our attention in the prior year.
A Busload of Tools for Assessing Annuities
Cannex, distributor of real-time annuity pricing data to broker-dealers and life insurers in the U.S. and Canada, has added analytic and educational tools to its website. The tools help...
Sorry to Burst Your Bubble
A look at the way bond funds recover from rate hikes and a review of the effect of rate hikes in the 1970s and 1980s on bond funds shows...
The Retirement Income Paradox
In a survey of advisors on the topic of retirement income, GDC Research and Practical Perspectives found the firm that certain "contradictions" are making it hard for firms to...
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...
