In her white paper “The Net Economic Benefit of Wrapping Risk with a Contingent Deferred Annuity,” Michelle Richter-Gordon, AIF® analyzes how unbundling the insurance component from underlying investments allows contingent deferred annuities (CDAs) to more effectively meet the needs of RIAs and their clients. In the context of income planning goals and needs, Michelle shines a...Continue Reading

Clients are concerned about the future. What are RIAs doing about It? Whether it’s COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, Social Security, or any of the other myriad factors, advisors say their clients are worried about being able to retire on time, and about outliving their income. But what is being done to address client anxieties?...Continue Reading

In his white paper “Portfolio Income Insurance: Understanding the Benefits of a Contingent Deferred Annuity” Michael Finke, PhD examines the impact of market risk on retirement spending and how random financial returns and unknown longevity can put undue stress on retirement savings… and the retirees that spending is meant to support. In the context of...Continue Reading

Wade Pfau explores how CDA may help solve for sequence-of-return risk In a new White Paper entitled, “Unbundling Investments from Insurance to Solve for Lifetime Sequence-of-Return Risk,” American College of Financial Services Professor Wade Pfau, PhD, explores the unique problem presented by sequence-of-returns risk on a retiree’s “fragile decade” – the five years before and...Continue Reading

Lifetime Income or a Fully-Stocked Wine Cellar? Of all the words to describe the last nearly 2 years, “uncertainty” may be the most appropriate. And in times of uncertainty, our natural inclination is to seek predictability. Results from the 2021 “RIA Protected Accumulation + Retirement Income Survey” find that’s particularly true for the investment advisory...Continue Reading

Lifetime Income or a Fully-Stocked Wine Cellar? RIAs understand the critical role of lifetime income in their clients’ financial lives  Results from Protective’s joint “2021 RIA Protected Accumulation + Retirement Income Survey” with RetireOne indicate that while some advisors believe annuities offering guaranteed lifetime income give clients peace of mind, there’s still a lack of awareness around recent advisory...Continue Reading

As interest rates remain historically low, investors and their advisors are seeking fixed income alternatives. Here’s how a next-gen fee-based advisory FIA may fit the bill. Introducing IndexMax ADVSM: a first-in-kind commission-free fixed index annuity (FIA) offering layered crediting strategies designed for maximizing accumulation by adding: (1) A no-loss floor to (2) Annual Performance Credits...Continue Reading

Sequence of returns risk (“SOR”), the risk that markets may go south as retirees begin taking income, is a well-publicized phenomenon. Though, because of its recency, Moshe Milevsky laments that it lacks a true measure or definition. In this report for Jackson he suggests a standardized measure—a sort of Richter scale for SOR that attempts to...Continue Reading

The last five working years and first five in retirement can be fraught with risk for American savers. During this “fragile decade” a bad sequence of returns can have a negative and lasting impact on client portfolios, and threaten the ability to make retirement savings last. For instance, a client who suffers a 33 percent...Continue Reading

Dr. Wade Pfau, PhD, CFA® recently partnered with inStream to create a portfolio simulator tool that incorporates fixed indexed annuities as an asset class. The tool allows users to compare hypothetical performance of traditional portfolios against those that also include allocations to fixed indexed annuities (FIAs). In his research, Dr. Pfau deployed FIAs as a...Continue Reading