‘De-Risky’ Business

By Kerry Pechter
Prudential has dominated the burgeoning market in jumbo pension buyouts. In the week following Prudential deals with JC Penney and Philips Electronics, RIJ spoke with Peggy McDonald (above), an actuary and a leader in the insurer's pension risk transfer team.

Better than Throwing Darts

By Kerry Pechter
'We have all these insurance agents selling billions of dollars of fixed indexed annuities. But they have few clues about how the crediting rates have performed,'' says Kent Jacquay. With his Indexalyzer software, he proposes a solution.

A New Kind of Income Annuity

By Kerry Pechter
Achaean Financial and Ash Brokerage, a large Fort Wayne, Ind., BGA, are partnering on a potential retirement game-changer: Achaean's immediate indexed income annuity, couched in Ash's JourneyGuide planning software. The underwriter has yet to be named.

These Hedges (Probably) Won’t Clip You

By Kerry Pechter
Listen to an actuary who put $50k into a five-year indexed variable annuity four years ago as an alternative to CDs. We explain how IVAs are priced, and we tell you how his investment has fared so far.
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The Link between Inequality and ‘Retirement Readiness’

By Kerry Pechter
“In North America – alone among regions – the population share of the middle class exceeds their share of wealth: in other words, the middle class as a group have less than average wealth," says the 2015 Global Wealth Databook from Credit Suisse.

Stock Market Volatility and Investors’ Trust

By Larry Cohen
Households mistrust discount brokers the most, followed by full-service brokers and banks, writes our guest columnist, a director at Consumer Financial Decisions - Strategic Business Insights. Financial-planning and mutual fund firms fare a bit better.
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