The new Treasury regulation on "longevity insurance" does more than promote late-life annuities. By removing an RMD barrier, it makes retirement income planning easier for middle-class people whose savings are mainly in qualified plans or IRAs.

Vanguard inventoried the wealth and income of affluent older Americans and found that a surprising number of them are still receiving defined benefit pensions. Income-wise, Vanguard identified eight types of afflluent retirees.

'If it takes six months for a comment period and six months for hearings, and then time to develop a final rule, by then we’re running into an election year,' Steven Saxon of Groom Law Group said at the SPARK Institute conference in Washington, DC, Monday.

The cartoon characters in hazmat suits on Club Vita's website handle "toxic waste." It's a metaphor for the actuarial consultancy's real service: helping the remaining DB plans in the UK deal with longevity risk.