Making More Than Peanuts at MetLife

By Kerry Pechter
The financially fit, well-diversified insurer collected almost twice as much in annuity premiums as its closest competitor in the first quarter of 2009, benefiting from a “flight to quality” in the wake of last year’s economic meltdown.

Can Retirees “Thrive” On Deferred Income Annuities?

By Kerry Pechter
Iowa insurance man Curtis Cloke thinks he has solved the "annuity puzzle" by building ladders of deferred income annuities for his clients. Now he and his partners are scaling up his "Thrive" system and taking it national.

The End of the VA Arms Race

By Kerry Pechter
The variable annuity "arms race" is over, a victim of the equity crash, low interest rates, and the destructive effects of competition for market share - mainly among publicly held life insurers. Here's a three-part look at what has happened, why it happened, and what could happen next in the "living benefit" space.

Talk About a Shake Out

By Kerry Pechter
Faced with capital shortages and ratings downgrades, the ranks of major publicly-held life insurers appears to be headed for consolidation. Historically low stock prices alone have made merger talk inevitable.
Featured

NAVA Steps Up Its Lobbying Game

By Editor Test
NAVA has moved from the Virginia suburbs to downtown Washington, the better to lobby Congress on behalf of annuity manufacturers and distributors. But the Association for Insured Retirement Solutions, as NAVA has called itself for the past two years, won't reveal its new name or acronym until July.
News

Matrix Of Corruption

By Edward Jay Epstein
Journalist and scholar Ed Epstein examines New York's ongoing public pension scandal, and the “placement agents” who use their political contacts, financial experience, powers of persuasion, and other means to extract pension fund money for private equity firms.