Tell Us What You Really Think

At the LIMRA-Society of Actuaries Retirement Industry Conference in Baltimore last week, Scott Stolz from Raymond James, Greg Jaeck from Edward Jones and Jarrod Fisher from Simplicity Financial Distributors delivered frank opinions about annuities and annuity issuers.
Anecdotal Evidence

Why Living Benefits Are Dying

By Kerry Pechter
Instead of buying variable and indexed annuities for lifetime income and protection against outliving their savings, Americans are buying annuities for accumulation. We pose six theories for the weakness of sales of annuities with lifetime income riders.
Onward and upward

Pfau named director of RICP program at The American College

By Editorial Staff
Wade D. Pfau (pictured) will also serve as co-director, with Steve Parrish, of the New York Life Center for Retirement Income at the college. College president and CEO George Nichols III also announced professional transitions within the college for Colin Slabach, David Littell, and Chad Patrizi.
Public-option retirement plans

The Case for Collaboration among State-Sponsored Savings Plans

The authors of this article, Angela M. Antonelli, director of the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives (pictured), J. Mark Iwry, a Brookings Institution fellow, and David C. John, an AARP policy advisor, recommend that individual US states with public-option workplace retirement plans should work in concert rather than alone.

Principal buys Wells Fargo’s retirement business

By Editorial Staff
The acquisition will double the size of Principal’s U.S. retirement business in terms of total recordkeeping assets. More than two-thirds of Wells Fargo’s institutional retirement assets are in plans ranging in size from $10 million to $1 billion.

Honorable Mention

By Editorial Staff
IRI issues 4Q 2018 annuity sales report; iPipeline favors “best interest” rule in New York; Vestwell, a retirement plan fintech, raises $30 million; Vanguard brings new active commodities fund to market; Giovanni and Coutts rise at Lincoln Financial; Global Bankers to divest its US life companies.

COVER STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

April 4, 2019

Why Indexed Annuity Sales Are So Strong

By Kerry Pechter
Many factors are driving the increase in indexed annuity sales: More manufacturers, better products, more distributors, competitive commissions, aging boomers, and relaxed regulation. But does the bubble contain the seeds of its own deflation?
March 28, 2019

Lessons from a Living (DC) Experiment

By Kerry Pechter
Israel has found that even a mandatory defined contribution system can’t resolve all of the behavioral, economic, or administrative issues that prevent low-income and minority workers from saving for retirement. (Photo: Mahane Yehuda market...
March 21, 2019

What Advisors Want from Annuity Issuers

By Kerry Pechter
This week, RIJ received a press copy of “What Advisors Want from Annuity and Insurer Providers-2019,” a study by Practical Perspectives, a Boxford, MA-based financial services market research firm.