WealthManagement.com’s Diana Britton published an article generously peppered with Ed Mercier quotes about the Constance contingent deferred annuity and the benefits it provides, both to retirees and the RIAs who serve them. The article goes into a fair amount of detail about fee-based annuities and how Constance differs from others.
“The novel part about this is that the assets don’t move. They stay directly at Schwab; they stay directly at Fidelity,” said Ed Mercier, president at RetireOne. “And the benefit for the advisor is, instead of having to pay 40 to 80 basis points on average for the underlying variable insurance sub-accounts, I could use my BlackRock, DFA, Schwab index funds, whatever I’m using, and I can get single digit product expenses there.”
Ed goes on to talk about the advantages for the RIA firm: the increased control, tax efficiency, and the low cost they can offer clients compared to other fee-based annuities. The article also covers a bit of RetireOne history, and closes with some stats from various surveys.