Cogent Research's new 2012 Assets in Motion study can help you understand and benefit from the rising flow of money from qualified plans to rollover IRAs.
In this video sponsored by Vanguard, Burton Malkiel, Princeton professor and author of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street," talks with RIJ editor Kerry Pechter about what "efficient market" means to him. The 10th edition of "A Random Walk" has just been published.
With the numbers of people over age 100 growing rapidly, there is an equally growing need for advisors to consider an array of retirement income solutions.
Annuity issuers are making a concerted effort to implement and promote paperless document delivery services.
A growing number of 401(k) plan sponsors, retirees, record keepers and regulators want retirees to stay in their plans well into, or even straight through, retirement, PIMCO has found.
TIAA-CREF’s TC Listens website is an innovative new medium for obtaining client feedback online.
TIPS can preserve purchasing power, provide systematic income and offer the assurance of a government guarantee for retirees depending on income from their investments.
With variable annuity sales down, firms are intensifying online product marketing campaigns to reach more prospective investors.
Annuity issuers are reaching out to non-English-speaking investors through websites written in Spanish and Asian languages, according to Corporate Insight.
PIMCO and its Allianz affiliates recently sponsored a new study, “Behavioral Finance and the Post-Retirement Crisis.” PIMCO Retirement Product Manager Tom Streiff explains how the study’s findings can foster the development of successful retirement income products.
A growing number of annuity issuers are using creative approaches on Twitter to reach new audiences online.
Many firms have launched engaging online sales campaigns focusing on the Roth IRA conversion opportunities that will be available in 2010.
Annuity firms introduced enhanced online security measures in 2009, but they remain laggards in the financial service industry.
The annuity industry has been slow to adopt social media. But given the industry’s target audiences, does it matter? Download an excerpt from the report "Social Media: Trends and Tactics in the Financial Services Industry."
Our latest research shows that dynamic displays, such as Flash interfaces, offer firms engaging new ways to present and market online educational content to advisors.
Industry Views are special reports that are sponsored and independent from RIJ's editorial content.
Wed, Feb 01, 2012
Carmen Reinhart, co-author with Kenneth Rogoff of the best-selling "This Time Is Different," spoke at the IMCA conference in New York this week. We're five years into a 10-year recovery from the credit binge, she said.
Wed, Jan 25, 2012
A directory of 27 software tools accompanies this overview of the rapidly evolving financial planning technology industry.
Wed, Jan 18, 2012
ING U.S. Retirement will combine its own target date funds with the AllianceBernstein three-insurer annuity platform to offer a lifetime income option to its 52,000 small and mid-sized plans.
Wed, Jan 11, 2012
Advisors can’t do everything themselves. But they need to be careful in choosing what to hand off to a software tool, a vendor or an assistant.
Wed, Jan 04, 2012
Here are brief reviews of four noteworthy but not-widely-known retirement income planning software tools, provided by the publisher of Virtual Office News and the T3 Newsletter. Mr. Bruckenstein is also a CFP.
Tue, Dec 20, 2011
The variable annuity with a lifetime income benefit--sometimes known as an exotic put option or an embedded derivative--was a product that has come back to bite many of the companies that sold it. Was this product ever the best solution for the Boomer retirement challenge?
Mon, Dec 12, 2011
"TIPS can play an important role in most retirement portfolios," writes this Tokyo-based economics professor. "... Like other assets, "TIPS have risks and do not eliminate the need for broad diversification." This article first appeared in Advisor Perspectives.
Wed, Dec 07, 2011
As the living benefits of variable annuities became more valuable during the financial crisis, contract owners astutely held on to them, according to a presentation by Ruark Consulting at a recent Society of Actuaries meeting in Chicago.
Tue, Nov 29, 2011
Like the Ford Mustang in 1965, the variable annuity with a lifetime income rider seemed like the right Boomer product at the right time in 2006. Then came the Crisis. A new survey by Cogent Research and the Insured Retirement Institute looks at where the VA is today and where it's headed.
Wed, Nov 23, 2011
VA issuers may be able to offer rich living benefits safely and inexpensively by embedding a futures-based hedging strategy inside their investment options. That's what Ohio National seems to have done. (Image by Spectrumphotofile.)
Sun, Nov 13, 2011
At least three proposals have been floated to open state pensions to private sector workers who have no retirement plan. Given the troubles of many state plans, that's counterintuitive. Artwork by Zaza Khabuliani.
Tue, Nov 08, 2011
U.S. life insurers can weather the impact of 'Operation Twist' for a few years, Moody’s Investors Service says. But another five-plus years of rock-bottom interest rates could damage profits and ratings.
Wed, Nov 02, 2011
For retirees who say, 'Don't sell me a product!', Thornburg Investment Management recommends a retirement income strategy built on 'endowment' spending, three buckets and its own dividend fund.
Tue, Oct 25, 2011
The Money Management Institute has identified 34 financial services firms that have created what it calls Personal Retirement Income Solution Management (PRISM) tools or programs.
Sun, Oct 16, 2011
An 'Occupy Wall Street' protester at New York's Zuccotti Park expresses her opinion. The same day, at the NY Athletic Club, Wall Streeters themselves criticized their own industry.
Wed, Oct 12, 2011
John Hancock Financial Network will offer its advisors the Retirement Sustainability Quotient, an income planning tool that Moshe Milevsky (pictured) developed for ManuLife Financial, JHFN's Canadian parent.
Thu, Oct 06, 2011
Guest speakers Fareed Zakaria (pictured) urged more fiscal stimulus for the economy while Andrew Friedman warned of looming tax hikes at the Insured Retirement Institute's conference in Boston. "Boom Time" was the conference theme this year.
Tue, Sep 27, 2011
Internet start-up Personal Capital is out to prove that mutual funds and face-to-face financial advice are obsolete. (At center, CEO Bill Harris, with Jim Del Favero, VP, product management (seated) and Ehsan Lavassani, engineering director.
Tue, Sep 20, 2011
The Dept. of Labor's bid to strengthen the fiduciary standard for advisers to retirement plans and IRAs became a political football. Now the DoL has agreed to revise and "re-propose" its proposal. Was the football fumbled... or stripped?
Tue, Sep 13, 2011
While vacationing in the upper Rio Grande Valley this summer, I caught two good-sized trout and a glimpse of my fantasy retirement. (Photo of the author by Lisa Higgins).
Tue, Sep 06, 2011
Concerned that your insurance company might be designated a SIFI (Systemically Important Financial Institution)? Then read Deloitte's primer on SIFIs. Here's a synopsis and a link.
Tue, Aug 30, 2011
Experts from Aegon Global Pensions, De Nederlandsche Bank and other Dutch pension and financial consulting firms are helping the Amsterdam-based P&D Network plant the seeds for "micropension" programs in the developing world. The final part of a two-part series.
Tue, Aug 23, 2011
You've heard of micro-credit: those mini-loans to female entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Now a micro-pension movement is underway, and one of the first pilot projects starts next month in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Part I of a two-part article.
Fri, Aug 12, 2011
The Society of Actuaries' recent book (available here in pdf form) puts the reader at the center of a web of hundreds of articles, research studies, other resources relevant to the risks and opportunities of Boomer retirement.
Mon, Aug 08, 2011
As an advisor, you can actually put clients in an annuity 'frame of mind.' These and other findings from behavioral finance research were presented at the 2011 Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision-Making last June.
Tue, Aug 02, 2011
Deferral bonuses, a key feature of many VAs, may not prevent contract owners from taking withdrawals, according to Milliman’s latest survey of issuers of VA guaranteed living benefits. Photo courtesy of Whimsicalwhisk.com.
Tue, Jul 26, 2011
Andrew Carnegie, founder of the non-profit Teacher's Insurance & Annuity Association, now TIAA-CREF, could not possibly have foreseen how his group annuity would lead to today's profitable trillion-dollar variable annuity industry.
Tue, Jul 19, 2011
How did upstart Jackson National Life get near the top of the VA heap? And why are so many advisors nervous that it may 'de-risk' its popular Perspective contract? JNL EVP Clifford Jack tells RIJ all that he can...
Tue, Jul 12, 2011
In an about-face on VAs, The Hartford has gone back to the GLWB, tempering its risks with a CPPI fund. The arrival of Steve Kluever from Jackson National in March reflects the new thinking.
Tue, Jul 05, 2011
VA issuers should take a cue from Michael Jordan, and realize that team players win more championships than individual stars, advises Bing Waldert of Cerulli Associates.
Wed, Jun 29, 2011
With the announcement of a retirement research center, Putnam Investments joins the "thought-leadership" game. It's all part of CEO Bob Reynolds' campaign to rebuild a tarnished brand--and to change the way America saves.
Mon, Jun 20, 2011
Launched five years ago, Ernst & Young's Retirement Income Knowledge Bank has become a useful map of the competitive landscape for insurers and broker-dealers.
Wed, Jun 15, 2011
In touting his firm's LifePath TDF-based deferred income option, Chip Castille of BlackRock emphasized that insurers should position in-plan annuities as retirement income enhancers rather than longevity risk mitigators. (I.e., appeal to greed, not fear.)
Tue, Jun 07, 2011
Prudential Financial, Raymond James, ING, Fidelity Investments and E*Trade all advertised during the French Open final between Rafael Nadal (above) and Roger Federer on NBC TV last Sunday--all vying for the "elite demographic" that follows tennis.
Tue, May 31, 2011
Not Warren Mosler, bond trader, racecar dabbler, Senatorial candidate and recent author of “The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds.”
Tue, May 24, 2011
Compensation-wise, income annuities can backfire for many advisors. An industry committee wants to solve the problem, but it’s not easy.
Tue, May 17, 2011
A few years ago, MassMutual mothballed Jerry Golden’s SPIA tool for advisors. Now, post-crisis, the company has re-embraced SPIAs, and sales are up.
Tue, May 10, 2011
Where can you find lowest SPIA prices on the web? RIJ compared prices at Immediateannuites, Income Solutions, Fidelity and (as a benchmark) Cannex. And the winner was...
Tue, May 03, 2011
Income annuities aren't a good product fit for every insurance company. But for New York Life, a mutual company with tons of reserves and a big book of life insurance, they make perfect sense.
Tue, Apr 26, 2011
African Americans in general have fewer assets, less faith in Wall Street and less appetite for risk than whites, but their need for financial guidance is arguably that much greater.
Mon, Apr 11, 2011
Some goldbugs have accused the Bank of International Settlements of engineering the 2008 financial crisis to subvert the dollar. This account of a visit to BIS' Swiss headquarters, first published in Harper's in 1983, has been updated for RIJ by the author.
Sun, Apr 10, 2011
Here's a smarter way for retirement income product manufacturers to segment and sell into the advisor market, according to survey analysts Howard Schneider of GDC Research and Dennis Gallant of Practical Perspectives.
Wed, Apr 06, 2011
The deal will allow the 1,200 members of the Profit-Sharing Council of America to give their six million plan participants access to a no-load, multi-issuer SPIA platform. (Photo of Kelli Hueler by David Lubarsky).
Wed, Mar 30, 2011
Here is the first of three excerpts from "Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance," the compact, illuminating new book by four NYU Stern School of Business professors about the fatally flawed structure of the GSEs.
Wed, Mar 23, 2011
Few organizations seem to understand the ascendancy of "open architecture" better than the Retirement Income Industry Association, whose mantra is "the view across the silos." Here's a report on its Spring Conference, held this week.
Tue, Mar 15, 2011
Using "non-Gaussian" analysis, Jim Otar has created a benchmark for evaluating retirement savings vehicles--and discovered that cautious savers might want to hold fewer equities.
Wed, Mar 09, 2011
Speaking at the 2011 Morningstar/Ibbotson Conference in Orlando, Roger Ibbotson (above) described low-liquidity as a largely unrecognized source of alpha in stocks and mutual funds.
Wed, Mar 02, 2011
Together, PIMCO's TIPS-based managed payout funds and MetLife's longevity insurance mitigate two big retirement risks: inflation risk and the risk of outliving one’s savings.
Tue, Feb 22, 2011
Advisors who use LPL Financial’s new Fee-Based Variable Annuity platform can manage VA subaccounts just like mutual funds. (Photo at LPL’s San Diego office.)
Wed, Feb 16, 2011
GuidedChoice is the latest 401(k) advice provider to announce a platform that helps participants turn their savings into income—with or without a rollover to an IRA. (Above: CEO Sherrie Grabot.)
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RIJ Publishing, 4340 Knollwood Dr., Emmaus, PA 18049, 610-965-3103
Retirement Income Journal is a new online magazine dedicated to writing for and about the industry that has coalesced around the challenge of helping Americans turn their savings into secure lifetime incomes. This industry includes members of the insurance, asset management, banking, pension, structured products, reverse mortgage, information technology, financial planning and academic communities and the professional organizations that serve them.
Send editorial queries to kerry.pechter@retirementincomejournal.com.
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