At the Employee Benefit Research Institute's policy forum in D.C. last week, retirement policy experts were not cheerful about the coming inauguration, and some feared that retirement security will take a back seat to tax cuts in the new year.

Almost four years after its IPO, Voya (formerly ING-US) has rebranded, retooled itself as a fixed indexed annuity shop and launched an ad campaign featuring origami rodents that talk. But it is still searching for the right mix of products, personnel and organizational structure.

During market turmoil, the messages from “retirement income” advisors to their clients should be substantially different in their content from the messages that investment advisors typically send to their clients.

Cannex, the Toronto-based annuity product data, just announced a new tool, based on research by annuity guru Moshe Milvesky, that enables advisors to do side-by-side comparisons of annuity contracts. The first phase allows comparisons of variable annuity living benefits.