Can insurers reinvent annuities to widen prospect pool, accelerate growth?
June 1, 2015 by Sam J. Friedman
With thousands of baby boomers turning 65 every day, and the number of defined-benefit pension plans available to support them continuing to decline, the pool of prime prospects for annuities offering lifetime income options should theoretically be deepening.
Yet despite seemingly optimal growth conditions, individual annuity sales last year were actually 11% lower than their peak in 2008, according to estimates by the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute.
This counterintuitive trend can be partially explained by the fact that some annuities carriers have scaled back in recent years to de-risk their portfolios, with persistently low interest rates making it problematic to generate the returns necessary to maintain profitability targets on certain products. Click HERE to read article
