Achaean Financial Launches Innovative Retirement Income Solutions

CHICAGO, June 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Delivering the next generation of retirement income products and solutions as a strategic partner to investors, financial advisors, plan sponsors and insurance carriers is the driving focus of Achaean Financial ("Achaean"). The company, founded by Lorry Stensrud, a 30-year veteran of the insurance industry, and additionally led by Michael C. Henkel, former President of Ibbotson Associates, is uniquely positioned to capitalize on a supply-demand dislocation in the retirement income market by leveraging its retirement advice software platform, Retirement Outcome and its innovative guaranteed income product design, Income Plus+.

Achaean's Retirement Outcome, has been cited by the Investment Management Institute as one of the top three models for providing retirement guidance, and is the only open-architecture retirement modeling platform available in the current marketplace. While product-set agnostic, Retirement Outcome is complemented by Achaean's patent-pending and cost-effective immediate variable annuity product design, Income Plus+.  Income Plus+ will be offered to new retirees seeking secure income, and also be offered as a means to transform, or "remediate" the liabilities associated with in-force variable annuities, unlocking excess reserves and risk-based capital from insurance company balance sheets.

"Investors, advisors and insurance companies are all faced with an unprecedented amount of information as the number of tools and products to make intelligent retirement decisions have grown exponentially in recent years. Yet there still remains critical and unmet needs for each of these market segments," said Mr. Stensrud, Chief Executive Officer of Achaean. "We created Retirement Outcome and Income Plus+ to cut through the clutter and provide simple, intelligent and altogether better solutions to bring peace of mind across the retirement income landscape."

Retirement Outcome is an advanced, open-architecture and fully customizable retirement planning tool to help investors and their advisors develop personalized retirement plans and generate solutions for income, wealth and asset allocations. Retirement Outcome takes a variety of information about a client in or near retirement to produce a personalized outcome report. 

Each of the various investing, guaranteed income and spending decisions can then be adjusted to show the impact they have on the client's income and wealth throughout retirement.

"What makes Retirement Outcome unique for advisors are the multiple levels of customization.  Both the user interface and all reports can be branded with the advisor's logo, and the asset allocation portfolios can be customized to the advisor's models choosing from an extensive palate of asset class benchmarks," said Mr. Henkel, President of Achaean. "Better outcomes and solutions are what comprise Achaean's DNA, and we are confident that Retirement Outcome provides a unique solution to foster deeper conversations about retirement planning between advisors and their clients in order to bring peace of mind to both parties."

Income Plus+ is a true annuity, with mortality credits enabling higher annual payments to investors. For insurers, Income Plus+ significantly reduces the crucial hedging cost associated with offering an income-guaranteed product by providing offsetting market risk exposure that permits the carrier to pre-determine the amount of exposure it is willing to undertake.  

"Achaean developed Income Plus+ to respond to the evolving retirement income market and coincides with demands among legislators in D.C., the Departments of Labor and Treasury and industry lobbying groups for products and services that enhance retirement income security," said Mr. Stensrud, Chief Executive Officer of Achaean. "Because of the competitive and minimum lifetime income guarantees as well as attractive liquidity and death benefit features for policyholders, and lower hedging costs, lower capital requirements and favorable accounting treatment for carriers, we are confident that Income Plus+ will hold tremendous appeal with both investors and insurance carriers."

For more information about Achaean Financial, please contact Rachael Fisher-Layne of JCPR at (973) 850-7318 or rfisher-layne@jcprinc.com.

About Achaean Financial

Based in Chicago, Achaean Financial is a financial services firm committed to providing innovative ideas and tools for creating secure retirement solutions that benefit insurance companies, financial advisors and investors. The company is uniquely positioned to capitalize on a supply-demand dislocation in the retirement income market by leveraging its retirement advice software platform, Retirement Outcome and its innovative income guarantee product, Income Plus+. These two products can be used independently but together provide a holistic solution for the largest opportunity in the financial services space: providing for retirement income peace of mind. For more information, visit www.achaeanfinancial.com.

CONTACT: Rachael Fisher-Layne
JCPR
(973) 850-7318
rfisher-layne@jcprinc.com

SOURCE Achaean Financial