The Complex Truth about Retiree Medical Costs
The cost of medical care in retirement doesn't look as scary when you break it down into annual expenses and remember that insurance covers most of the big-ticket items.
Guest Column
The Old Allure of New Money
'The cryptocurrencies are a statement of faith in a new community of entrepreneurial cosmopolitans who hold themselves above national governments,' writes the Nobel Prize-winning economist, author and Yale professor.
Product news
It’s official: Lincoln’s indexed variable annuity has arrived
The contract's costs, other than those embedded in the performance caps and floors, are 40bps for an income rider, 10 to 30bps for a death benefit and administrative fees, and between 49 and 120 bps for variable subaccounts, if chosen.
News
Honorable Mention
Mutual fund assets down again, says Cerulli; TIAA calls for infrastructure lending reforms; MassMutual publishes research on Asian Americans; John Hancock hires Infosys for digital modernization; Apple leads all companies in recent stock buybacks.
Fiduciary rule
Five senators want the fiduciary rule to return from ‘vacation’
'If the Department does not appeal the Fifth Circuit’s decision, or it is not overturned on appeal, what will the Department do in the future to protect retirement savers from conflicted advice?' the senators asked.
For insurers
Pressure to reinsure VA riders may ease: A.M. Best
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) is trying to modify reserve and capital requirements for variable annuity riders so that non-economic volatility is diminished, A.M. Best reported.
Pensions
As the discount rate rises, so do pension funding ratios: Milliman
Milliman's forecasts for the discount rate range from a high of 4.43% by end of 2018 and 5.03% by end of 2019 to a low of 3.63% at end of 2018 and 3.03% by end of 2019.
Annuity sales
Indexed annuities sales up in 1Q2018: LIMRA
As for structured annuities, LIMRA is now using the term “registered indexed-linked annuities” to describe them and will include them in its overall variable annuity sales figures. These products represent about 9% of the VA market.
COVER STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
May 17, 2018
This Is Worse than the Fiduciary Rule
Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the retirement industry. Now that the Obama fiduciary rule is gone, some people are realizing that it actually served a purpose. The problems that the DOL addressed...
May 10, 2018
La Vida Robo
After MIT and a stint at Merrill Lynch, Carlos Garcia decided to start Finhabits, the first bilingual English and Spanish robo-advisor and savings tool. It's for first-time savers. It's also one of the first...
May 3, 2018
The Bucket Brigade
Time-segmentation stands at the intersection of insurance and investments, of modern portfolio theory and asset/liability matching, and of behavioral finance and quantitative analysis.
