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 lobbying efforts.
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 rates might sound like salvation in certain quarters.
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 close to last year’s pace.
Featured
Fed to Link Interest, Jobless Rates
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed still plans to suppress interest rates until at least mid-2015, even while tying any rate increase to a decline in the unemployment rate past 6.5%. The Fed's bond purchases will jump to $85 billion per month.
Life Insurers, Under Three Microscopes
“Life insurers have weathered the financial crisis in terms of solvency but not in terms of profitability,” said analyst Mary Pat Campbell of Conning Research. Conning, Ernst & Young and Fitch Ratings have all issued new reports or commentaries on the U.S. life insurance sector.
News
IRA assets to reach $8 trillion by 2017: Cerulli
A new report from Cerulli Associates analyzes pre-retiree, retiree, and post-retiree transactions and investor behavior, including a close look at IRAs.
AXA Equitable donates famous mural to the Met
America Today, Thomas Hart Benton's 10-panel mural celebrating national progress in the 1920s, had been on display in the lobby of AXA Equitable's New York City headquarters from 1996 until this year.
End is in sight for U.S. ownership of AIG shares
“We are very pleased to repay 100 percent of all that America invested in AIG plus a total combined positive return – or profit – of $22.7 billion,” said AIG president and CEO Robert H. Benmosche.
FIA sales up a hair in 3Q 2012: AnnuitySpecs.com
Allianz Life maintained its leading sales position with a 14% market share, followed by Aviva Security Benefit Life, American Equity, and Great American (GAFRI).
The Bucket
Brief or late-breaking items from or about Prudential Insurance, Phoenix Companies, Nationwide Financial, Lincoln Financial Group, Great-West Financial, New York Life, John Hancock Financial Network, Genworth Financial, Lincoln Retirement, and Cogent Research.
