Club Vita: Where Levity Meets Longevity Risk

By Vanessa Drucker
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.

An Algorithm That Loves Annuities

By Kerry Pechter
PrARI, the retirement product allocation calculator that Cannex recently acquired with its purchase of the Qwema Group, shows advisers how to maximize retirement income (or legacy) using a blend of mutual funds, variable annuities and income annuities.

Short on Shares, Women Share Homes

By Jenna Gottlieb
Single, divorced and widowed older women are reducing their expenses by sharing a home or apartment with similarly situated women. A new website helps them find each other.

Merrill Lynch’s Intentions are “Clear”

By Kerry Pechter
"I want to be careful not to call it a product or a service. It’s an approach,” said David Tyrie, head of Personal Wealth and Retirement at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, in describing Merrill Lynch Clear, a new communication strategy aimed at Boomers.
Featured

Of Ponies, Manure Piles, and Annuities

By Kerry Pechter
An article about deferred income annuities in last Saturday's New York Times looked at DIAs through the "investment frame" rather than the "insurance frame." That's the wrong way to evaluate annuities.

The Interest Rate Enigma

By Claudio Borio and Piti Disyatat
"The accumulation of debt and the distortions in production and investment patterns induced by persistently low interest rates hinder the return of those rates to more normal levels," write these officials of the Bank of International Settlements and the Bank of Thailand.
News