Cyril Tuohy is a writer based in Pennsylvania. He has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. He can be reached at cyril.tuohy@innfeedback.com.
Connecting employee groups to insurance benefit platforms is causing more headaches for advisors as voluntary employer-sponsored benefits become more popular with employees.
Agents selling Ameritas Life Insurance’s new term life insurance product can expect more commission options as the company seeks to meet agents’ desires for more flexibility.
Long-term care insurance policy premiums are stabilizing for many as the industry is finding better pricing methods. Still, few insurers are offering LTCi products, a new survey finds.
AIG is marketing the first fixed annuity with a guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB) offered in New York State. The product comes as the harshest aspects of the Department of Labor fiduciary rule remain in limbo.
About 42 percent of advised retail assets were invested under a fiduciary standard at the end of 2016, a new report found. That shift to fiduciary is growing as brokerage firms move clients into fee-based accounts and investors expect a fiduciary obligation.
Forecasters and pundits released their crystal balls and offered glimpses of what life and annuity advisors can expect when it comes to product development, distribution and insurance company performance.
The SEC was busy this year, with several high-profile scams carried out by a small minority of questionable advisors. Losses in these cases run into the hundreds of billions.
Cultivating relationships with advisors will play a vital role in the growth of exchange-traded funds, a report found.
Athene, a top writer of indexed annuities, will emerge a big winner following Voya Financial’s decision to separate itself from its closed block of variable annuities and its portfolio of individual fixed and fixed indexed annuities, market analysts said.
Indexed universal life (IUL) insurance dominated life insurance sales through the first nine months of 2017. IUL sales were boosted by a host of new products and features.
We asked our readers what they would like to see in the industry in the coming year.
The hot buffered variable annuity market is driving Lincoln Financial’s decision to increase its 240-person annuity wholesaler force by about 15 percent in 2018. Buffered VA sales are expected to hit $9 billion in 2017, a sharp increase over recent years.
More regulation, changing compensation and the erosion of public trust are the top reasons many brokers/registered reps say they are considering striking out on their own via the independent channel. Nearly half of respondents to a new survey say they expect the brokerage channel to deteriorate.
The question is how and when the tide shifts between marketing an annuity for accumulation, as agents seem to be doing now, and marketing an annuity for income, as agents did several years ago and are likely to again in the future.
If 2017 is shaping up to be a letdown for annuity sales, it wasn’t for lack of trying as insurers launched new products and tinkered with product features.
Financial advisors warned against hastily restructuring businesses toward self-employment to take advantage of the proposed changes to the tax code.
Lower corporate tax rates in the $1.5 trillion tax reform package are expected to help the life insurance industry in at least two ways, industry executives say. One way is that group life insurance sales will see a boost as Americans join payrolls in an expanding economy. The other way is that those lower corporate tax rates will lower risk-based capital (RBC) ratios for insurers.
Giant brokerage firms are divided about the broker protocol, an agreement to prevent lawsuits if advisors move to competitors. Some say the differing strategies are sure to lead to more lawsuits and cause problems throughout the industry.
Many young and older Americans are opting for dental savings plans to combat rising costs. Dental plans are not insurance, but offer deeply discounted pricing to members.
A survey of insurance technology offerings unearthed dozens of small cutting-edge companies with products designed to help insurers be more efficient amid shrinking profit margins.
