One night while attending a Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) meeting, Steve Plewes came down to the lobby of his hotel after the day’s sessions with no one to join for dinner…

Sam Richter had a meeting with an executive at Allianz, and he wanted to be present with information that shows he is keeping up with the company and cares about how it is doing…

Question: Is it easier to work on life insurance solutions when the client is a personal friend or a stranger (such as a referral, seminar attendee, qualified lead, etc.) and why?…

While a majority of financial advisors (56 percent) do not use social media as part of their business strategies, the vast majority also indicate a preference for doing business with companies that have stable, easy-to-use technology…

Allianz Life, marketer of the Dominator Plus-branded fixed annuity and the 222, 360, 365i, Endurance, MasterDex and Pro V1-branded indexed annuities, was the top seller of fixed annuities in the first quarter with $1.16 billion in sales, according to Beacon Research…

What does Des Moines have on Hartford and London? Indexed annuities, that’s what. In fact, Des Moines, already a worthy contender for the nation’s top life and health insurance hub, is in a league of its own when it comes to indexed annuities…

Robert A. Kerzner, president and chief executive officer of LIMRA/LOMA, said the organizations would take a “quantum leap” into retirement research and data analysis…

Total U.S. annuity sales for the first quarter were $49.6 billion, down 2 percent from the fourth quarter in 2012, and down 6.6 percent from the first quarter in 2012 as fixed annuities took the biggest hit due to low interest rates…

Iowa’s new annuity disclosure regulation, complete with precedent-setting illustration regulations for fixed annuities, has been in effect since Jan. 1 but, so far, the Iowa Insurance Division has received no complaints about infractions…

Takeover sales, where one insurance carrier’s voluntary benefits plan is replaced with a similar plan by another carrier, accounted for 45 percent of new voluntary benefit sales premiums last year, up from 42 percent in 2011…

The combined assets of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI) trust funds will be depleted in 2033, and the Medicare Trust Fund is expected to be empty by 2026, two years later than projected last year…

For financial advisors seeking to gain a foothold in the 403(b) nonprofit retirement plan market, the most fertile opportunities lie with the higher education segment and with the small plan category, according to an analysis of the most recent benchmark survey…

Financial advisors, where have you gone? The next time financial advisors sing the blues about falling life insurance premiums, ask them when they last reached out to an African-American prospect. Chances are they probably haven’t. But they should…

The five healthiest states for older adults are Minnesota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Iowa, while the least healthy states for seniors are Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana, West Virginia and Arkansas, according to a new report…

One of the nation’s largest life insurance carriers is joining forces with two global consulting firms to apply new modeling techniques to study the behavior of annuities policyholders, Lincoln Financial Group has announced…

Is the day coming when insurance agents will be selling crossover life insurance and annuity products? That is the direction Nationwide Financial is heading…

For Lincoln Financial Group, growth in 2013 will come from strengthening its relationship with distributors who sell the company’s life and annuities products, according to the company’s chief executive…

The conventional wisdom is that there’s little money to be made in the small plan 401(k) market, and even less profit to be made in the micro plan retirement market. Economies of scale don’t work as well there as with larger plans, the theory goes…

The most “financially capable” U.S. citizens live in California, Massachusetts and New Jersey, while the least financially capable live in Mississippi, Arkansas and Kentucky, according to a new survey…