Income Alternatives Industry

News

RIIA Committee Seeks Research For Projected Curriculum

The committee will solicit the best academic research in several areas deemed essential for advisors who want to meet the retirement income challenge.

Immediate Annuities Favored by Retirement Professionals—RIR Poll

Forty-one percent of respondents would use half their 'mother's' liquid assets to buy a single premium immediate annuity (SPIA) and invest the other half in a balanced index fund.

Public Pensions Defend Role In Letter To Congress

Pension plans have set aside roughly $3 trillion in assets to pay for future benefits, says the National Association of State Retirement Administrators.

Last Chance to Vote on Mom’s Retirement Income Strategy

Have you voted in our online poll? If not, you’re in luck. The voting booth will stay open an additional week.

Many Insurance Executives Predict Higher M&E, GLWB Fees

Some 65% of executives expect 
charges for lifetime withdrawal guarantees to go up and about 55% expect fees for minimum withdrawal guarantees to rise.

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Articles

No Guarantees For Guaranteed Income

BOSTON-Retirement income planners, along with mutual and insurance fund executives, are wracking their brains to come up with new products that are low cost, easy to use and easy to sell. So far, that is the $70 trillion-dollar question for which no one looking at the rollover potential of the Baby Boomer market has been able to come up with the answer.

Hybrid Income Products Breed Concern Among State Regulators

Applications for a flurry of new investment products, in which guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits (GLWBs) are attached to managed accounts, lie pending before the Securities and Exchange Commission. But state insurance and securities regulators in some states, including New York, Florida and Alabama, have concerns about the products, which straddle the line between investments and insurance.

Structured Products' Blend Safety with Upside Potential

These principal-guaranteed investments often combine a fixed income investment with equity or commodity futures. Popular among retail investors in Europe and Asia, they haven't caught on so far with U.S. advisers. But that's expected to change.

Why Retirees Aren't Purchasing Lifetime Annuities

A recent Working Paper, entitled Behavioral Obstacles to the Annuity Market by Wei-Yin Hu and Jason S. Scott, published by the Pension Research Council of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, uses basic principles of behavioral finance in an attempt to explain 'why most retirees do not purchase longevity insurance in the form of lifetime annuities' despite the fact that 'decades of economic analysis... have pointed to annuities as a major component…

Longevity Insurance Refuses To Die

Americans just wont buy income annuities, say the variable annuity marketers. But the diehard fans of life-contingent income annuities say: Baloney.

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