Non-variable universal life sales for the first quarter were over $768.2 million, down 20.4% compared to the previous quarter and down nearly 13% from the first quarter 2018, according to Wink’s Sales & Market Report. New CSO requirements and less time devoted to sales are likely causes of the poor numbers, said Sheryl Moore of Wink.
The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement (SECURE) Act is designed to expand access to workplace retirement plans, particularly for small businesses, and will improve the ability for employers to extend greater access to lifetime income options in those plans.
A group annuity risk transfer product, such as a pension buy-out product, allows an employer to transfer all or a portion of its pension liability to an insurer. These product sales surpassed $4.7 billion in the first quarter 2019, an increase of 240% year-over-year.
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America added new benefit features to several of its fixed index annuities (FIAs), with “the goal of helping provide clients with more flexibility, choice, and control.”
Overall, U.S. annuity sales were $60.8 billion; an increase of 17% from the first quarter 2018 results. It is the highest first quarter for total annuity sales going back a decade.
Employees are opening their wallets for voluntary benefits, with those sales increasing to $7.2 billion in 2018. According to LIMRA research, since 2010 the percent of employers offering voluntary benefits as part of their overall employee benefits package has increased 11 percent.
When people think of estate planning, they think about death – the ultimate threat. As creatures programmed to secure survival, considering and planning for our demise is more than a little counter-intuitive. It’s counter-survival.
Writing a book is a complicated process. Here are some tips for moving the process along.
Since 2011, accumulation-focused annuity product sales have experienced steady growth, which LIMRA SRI researchers predict will continue over the next five years. As a result of low interest rates, income-focused annuity sales had been declining since 2015 until interest rates increased in 2018.
More than 64 percent of agents reported increased or higher sales of Medigap insurance in 2018. Just over one-in-four (27.2%) indicated that their sales were about the same as the prior year, with only 8.7 percent reporting decreased or lower sales.
The best thing an insurance agent can do is generate their own leads, but knowing where to start and what you need to make it possible can be scary and confusing. But you can generate your own leads, and the specific set of tools that you need, once you have them, will cost you more time than it will money.
How many hours must tax-paying Americans work to kick in for the cost of a free public college education? Quite a few, if Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., gets his way. Sanders is running for president with the promise of college education free to all, which carries an estimated $70 billion price tag.
Within the last decade, the industry has striven to make e-delivery the standard. Protective Life began offering it in 2008, with most other insurers quickly following suit. But customers and demanding more efficiency and services all the time. Here are a few tips to improve e-delivery.
When we begin new projects and work with new experts, we can easily make the mistake of assuming how things will work. We assume that a new partner will tell us everything we need to know up front, but that’s usually not how the dynamic will play out. What can we learn as advisors?
The appraisal of remaining term insurance as potential life settlement opportunities is an emerging trend. Concurrently, many of the agents who could have life settlement opportunities are unaware of life settlement due to a lack of education from their upline.
U.S. life insurance application activity slowed down in March, largely because young people did not buy. Overall activity fell 4.9% year over year, according to the MIB Life Index. Part of the decline is attributable to March 2018 being such a good month, MIB explained.
The National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) has launched new features to its popular mobile app.
Just one-third (31 percent) of middle-income baby boomers feel well prepared for retirement. That makes this year’s National Retirement Planning Week, which began April 8, the perfect time for agents everywhere to reassess their approach to retirement planning with their clients.
Overall annuity sales rose 9.7 percent in 2018, with the combined sales of fixed and variable annuities reaching $218 billion, according to the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI), citing final 2018 market data for the U.S. annuity industry from Beacon Research and Morningstar.
For the first time since 2007, AIG Companies has taken over as the top seller of annuities according to LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute. In addition, there are two new companies in this year’s top five compared to 2017 sales.
