3 Big Trends Driving Retirement Planning In The New Normal

Sen. Elizabeth Warren renewed her attack on Wells Fargo & Co., urging the Federal Reserve to remove the 12 directors who were on the board when bank employees set up legions of fake customer accounts.

The LGBT community has always faced unique challenges–physical, emotional and financial. And despite the fact that the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down, there are still plenty of legal obstacles for transgender, lesbian and gay couples–some of them surfacing just in time for retirement. An analysis of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer…

The importance of growth for a business is no secret. It helps a business drive value, serve customers, attract talent, and contribute to the community and society at large. This is especially true for the health insurance business.

“We were lost,’’ said her mother, Erica Freilich, whose daughter now attends Boston University“ It was either do this or watch your child die.’’. Now, a growing number of families are challenging insurance companies that refuse to cover wilderness therapy, including a Massachusetts family that sued Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in May for refusing to pay for their son’ s…

—All four health insurance providers on New Mexico’s state-run exchange have submitted rate proposals for the coming year, despite uncertainty about key federal subsidies. New Mexico Health Connections CEO Martin Hickey said Thursday his cooperative is proposing a nearly 80 percent premium increase for individuals. Health Widler of the Office of the…

—The Michigan Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a Detroit- area man who is seeking insurance benefits for injuries suffered when he got out of his pickup truck. Daniel Kemp tore a calf muscle while stretching on his tiptoes to grab a thermos, briefcase and overnight bag, just 30 seconds after parking at home. Farm Bureau Insurance has warned that insurance…

—The state House has approved legislation restricting the factors that insurers can use in setting automobile insurance rates. The bill, a watered-down version of legislation that had stalled in committee amid opposition from industry groups, was approved Thursday on a 24-14 vote. It now goes to the Senate.

June 14– American Family Insurance executive Bill Westrate has been named company president, the Madison- based insurer said Wednesday. Westrate, 44, who has been chief operating officer, will assume the president title from Jack Salzwedel, chairman and chief executive officer of American Family. Salzwedel has held the president title since 2014.

—Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware is seeking a rate increase of 33.6 percent for covering individuals under the Affordable Care Act. Highmark’s rate request comes after Aetna, which covers almost 12,000 Delawareans under the ACA, announced last month that it is pulling out of Delaware health insurance exchange. Aetna’s decision leaves Highmark,…

Bill Haslam is asking President Donald Trump to declare a major disaster in the state following severe storms on Memorial Day weekend. The storms on May 27 and May 28 knocked out power to more than 180,000 customers in Memphis alone. Tennessee’s members of Congress are urging Trump to approve federal disaster assistance for Blount, Cumberland, Fayette, Knox,…

The bill is one of several proposals pending this year for a program that insures 5 million homes and businesses, including 230,000 in New Jersey, but cannot repay nearly $25 billion borrowed from the U.S. If Congress does not renew the NFIP before it expires on Sept. 30, home sales in flood plains would be disrupted. Led by New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez and…

Officials with Blue Cross Blue Shield Arizona and Centene Corp’s Ambetter by Health Net say they’ve filed with the state Department of Insurance to continue offering insurance. Blue Cross sells in 13 mainly rural counties and will maintain a similar set of plans. Blue Cross stepped in and offered coverage.

This week, Edward Jones made a similar change in tactics ahead of the rule’s June 9 effective date just as House Republicans moved to introduce legislation that aims to overturn the new rule. “Additional flexibility granted by the Department of Labor has created the possibility that Edward Jones will be able to offer our clients mutual funds in a…

The agency, the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, has posted a slidedeck giving blow-by-blow examples of how the new pre-enrollment verification process is supposed to work. Here’s a look at three secrets from the webinar, based a copy of the slidedeck obtained by ThinkAdvisor Life Health and other sources. CCIIO is an arm of the Centers…

In his high-stakes strategy to overhaul the federal health law, President Donald Trump is threatening to upend the individual health insurance market with several key policies. The Trump administration has already acted to depress enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans, has instructed the IRS to back off enforcement of the requirement that most people…

In a regulatory filing, the variable annuity provider said Pimco’s Total Return bond strategy is out and DoubleLine Capital’s Core Fixed Income Fund is in, according to a Reuters report. The Pimco fund was led by Bill Gross until he left Pimco in September 2014 to join Janus Capital, where he runs the Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund.

A FINRA hearing panel barred a registered representative, Jim Seol, for participating in private securities transactions, engaging in undisclosed outside business activities, and for making misrepresentations to his employer in compliance questionnaires. According to the hearing panel decision, Seol formed WRCI in September 2011 to market U.S….

As the health insurance sector faces increasing competition on price and affordability, there will need to be clearer points of differentiation among providers to ensure each can be distinguished from the next. Due to the ease in switching service providers, consumers are increasingly unforgiving, making it more challenging than ever to retain loyal…

A 16- month investigation revealed that the people in the alleged crime circle staged crashes and filed false insurance claims, Georgia Department of Insurance spokesman Glenn Allen said in a news release. Columbus: Timothy M. Lewis, 25; Rodney R. Lockett, 25; Angelia E. Jones, 49; Emory C. Stevens Jr., 27; Mackery A. Strong, 28. Lumpkin: Kamesha Lockett, 23; Jason D. Martain, 23;…

Summary paragraph: A new report by the Spectrem Group finds that several Americans lack confidence in saving properly for retirement, with the most concerned belonging to the Baby Boomer generation. That’s the conclusion drawn from a recent survey by Spectrem Group. The survey found that more than half anticipate saving between $500,000 and $1 million.

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention give evidence for that possibility in a summary of 2016 results from the National Health Interview Survey program. The U.S. Census Bureau helps the survey team administer the questionnaire to about 35,000 households every year. For the new survey report, CDC researchers looked at the for…

Is there something to those self-indulgent millennial stories after all? People who have already retired probably got there, by and large, by their own efforts and the help of a pension plan from an employer, although the latter is certainly disappearing. But millennials, according to a survey from Natixis Global Asset Management, not only aren’t focused on…

Health insurer Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is leaving the door open to selling plans on the individual market in Iowa in 2018, after publicly announcing in April that it did not plan to participate in the exchange. In an editorial in the Des Moines Register titled “How we can re-enter Iowa’s individual market in 2018,” John Forsyth, the company’s chairman and…

The “repeal and replace” effort to eliminate the Affordable Care Act as the law of the land has spun its wheels deep into the mud of the U.S. Senate, but that hasn’t stopped the California legislature from moving forward with their own compensatory plan to deliver single-payer health insurance to the most populous state in the nation. “With President Trump’s…

June 06– Monday was the deadline for insurance companies in Ohio to propose their 2018 rates under the Affordable Care Act. “There is certainly a lot of anxiety around the repeal of ACA and how it can affect insurance coverage,” Aravind Chandrasekaran, an associate professor at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, said in an email.

June 05– Shoddy enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is forcing Community Health Options to seek a 19.6 percent average rate increase for individual health insurance plans in 2018, Maine’s largest ACA insurer said Monday. The two other major ACA insurers in Maine, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, said…

Many older consumers also have problems coping with debt payments, understanding their loans and recovering from financial scams, among other issues, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Some seniors turned to credit cards after facing an unexpected financial shock, such as a large medical bill, the CFPB report found.

Washington— As Congress struggles to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a different, far less visible problem is playing out in state capitals and in health insurance offices across the country. The filing deadline for Ohio insurers is Monday. Companies including Medical Mutual of Ohio, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Akron- based Summa and Canton-…

—An insurance company has filed a complaint against the family of a West Virginia woman who was shot and killed by her father. The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports Erie Insurance Property and Casualty Company filed the complaint Thursday in United States District Court against the estate of Sandra Nichols, who was fatally shot in October 2016 by 92- year-old…

Index funds are on a roll. Matt Levine at Bloomberg explores this issue regularly, including the suggestion that index funds are worse for capitalism than communism and whether common ownership reduces competition. And then there’ s the financial plumbing to worry about. Wall Street brokers say the shift to index-tracking has changed the way they buy and sell…

June 05– REPORTING FROM SACRAMENTO– Don’t delude yourself that legislation to create a California universal healthcare system passed the state Senate last week. There really aren’t any details, but as envisioned, it would replace all private and government insurance, including senior citizens’ Medicare. The California concept is promoted as ” Medicare for all,”…

Only 4.6% of U.S. households told census takers they had annuities or trusts in 2013, but those households had an average of $180,271 in annuity and trust assets each. The Census Bureau published those figures today in the first batch of a major new stream of U.S. annuity, trust and cash-value life insurance data: two new columns added to each Survey of Income and…

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Hematology Week– Tomorrow, Hemophilia Federation of America is hosting a Patient Fly- In and Virtual Hill Day for the bleeding disorders community. As questions surrounding health reform move to the Senate, patients will meet with their Senators, ensuring that their needs are represented. “We have an amazing opportunity…

Senate committee and leadership staff will start putting together a draft bill over the week-long recess. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi told Politico that enough consensus has been made to start writing a bill. However, he added that major fault lines remain, including how to handle phasing out Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and how to control…

Massachusetts banks started the life insurance company, but new regulatory requirements and the low-interest-rate environment have made their involvement in the company increasingly expensive. If the banks remained shareholders, they would be likely to demand a greater share of the profits and eat into the dividends the insurance company currently…

—Five insurers are seeking an average 9 percent increase in rates for health coverage in Pennsylvania through the federal Healthcare.gov marketplace in 2018, a significant drop from this year’s increase. However, Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller warned that an effort by the Trump administration or Congress to undermine the marketplaces could drive…

About 55,000 New Mexico residents buy their insurance through the state exchange, known as beWellnm, and 200,000 are eligible to participate. New Mexico has sustained a competitive health insurance exchange with four private providers. Others are Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico, Molina Healthcare and Christus Health Plan.

A common misconception held by broker-dealers about fee-only advisers is they don’t take care of their client’s insurance needs because they don’t sell insurance. Many BD-based advisers are gearing up for the fiduciary standard by becoming fee-based- charging fees on the brokerage side and still selling insurance products. To me, this is a mistake.

Since 2011, Mitchell has been on a mission to create wealth- $50 billion to be exact- in the Black community through an innovative and well-thought-out insurance program backed by his employers and the 1,200 African-American insurance agents the company employs. “We are on mission to create $50 billion of tax-free future income in the black community,”…

An insured homeowner whose home has been badly damaged is entitled to coverage for the cost of repairs, even if those far exceed the property’s market value, a state appeals court has ruled.

People seek out life insurance options for a wide variety of reasons. These include income replacement, providing for college, leaving a legacy, or ensuring children are taken care of in the event of some unexpected tragedy. Before I can recommend the right policy, I need to understand what brought the client to me in the first place.

Byline: Robert Bloink, William H. Byrnes. Even when a client purchases a “permanent” type of life insurance policy, situations can arise in which the investment may simply no longer make sense. However unnecessary a life insurance policy investment may have become, the client must be sure to carefully evaluate the detailed tax consequences that the IRS has…

—A report commissioned by a California nursing union suggests funding a single-payer health care system with a sales tax hike and a new tax on business revenue to raise $100 billion a year. The report released Wednesday was prepared by researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. It comes as the state Senate nears a Friday deadline to vote on the…

The nuclear family has traditionally been defined as two parents, two-and-a-half children and a house with a white picket fence. It’ s been the basis for the American image of“ family” since the 1950 s. But as they say, the times are a changin’.

Trump’s chief of Medicaid and Medicare defends budget cuts and a new approach. In an interview Tuesday with Capital Download, Verma also criticized Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to cover millions of lower-income adults as unwise, saying it “makes a lot of sense” for them to get insurance coverage instead in the private market, in some cases with subsidies.

New survey suggests that deliberately false or misleading news articles have the potential to impair Americans’ ability to make wise decisions in investments and retirement planning. Many people have enough problems figuring out where to invest, how to avoid fees, whether to refinance mortgages and a slew of other money topics without fake financial news…

–Longer life spans and disappointing investment returns will help create a $400 trillion retirement-savings shortfall in about three decades, a figure more than five times the size of the global economy, according to a World Economic Forum report. That includes a $224 trillion gap among six large pension-savings systems: the U.S., U.K., Japan, Netherlands, Canada…

“They didn’ t want to hear about it,” said Mr. Weiner, chairman and president of Perelson Weiner, a certified public accounting firm.“ They weren’ t prepared to receive that information at those ages— it wasn’ t in their sense of what was relevant to them.”. “We’ re getting closer,” said Mr. Weiner, 71.“ The thought of being left all of this money is outside of their frame of reference.

May 25– When Rachel Thorpe tried to renew her auto insurance last year for her Toyta RAV4, she was stunned to see her monthly premium had nearly doubled to $600. The Sarasota driver was baffled since her only recent claim was over a broken windshield. A barrage of non-weather related water claims led to big losses at Citizens Property Insurance and other companies,…

A 2016 survey found that just one in 10 wealthy individuals had given complete information about their estates to their heirs, out of fear that such disclosures would dampen their work ethic. The survey, which was conducted by Wilmington Trust and polled individuals with a net worth in excess of $20 million, also found that two-thirds of the respondents were“…

Cars carry cameras, computers and warning signals to make travel safer, but one piece of outdated 20th-century technology poses a safety risk for drivers and pedestrians: headlights.

On May 8, a monster thunderstorm rolled over the Denver metro area during the evening rush hour. Now, given the number of claims filed for damaged cars and homes, the storm is going to be ” Colorado’s most expensive insured catastrophe,” at $1.4 billion, according to the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association. The largest hailstone reported to the…

According to the Congressional Budget Office’ s latest score of the Republicans’ Obamacare replacement bill, 23 million people would lose health insurance by 2026 if the bill were to become law. In doing so, the bill, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this month, demonstrates a dramatically different philosophy toward health insurance than the…

—A preliminary assessment has found about $86 million of damage and costs from recent flooding and storms in Missouri. The figures provided Thursday by the state Department of Public Safety include almost $58 million of public costs for damage to infrastructure, debris removal and emergency response efforts. Eric Greitens had asked President Donald Trump…

That’ s the topline finding from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan government agency that analyzes proposed legislation. CBO analysts reached a similar set of conclusions when they reviewed an earlier version of the GOP bill in March. Both versions cut $800 billion from Medicaid over 10 years, which the agency estimates alone would cost 14…

—It’s been more than two months since northern Utah resident Wyatt Brammer’s house was damaged from flooding and he still hasn’t gotten it fixed. The risk of flooding in northern Utah could be exacerbated by insufficient infrastructure and flood maps that haven’t been updated frequently enough, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. In the future, northern Utah…

WASHINGTON— Federal Reserve Board officials said at a meeting early this month that they wanted to see evidence of stronger economic growth before continuing to increase the Fed’ s benchmark interest rate, according to minutes of the meeting published on Wednesday. Investors also learned for the first time on Wednesday how the central bank is likely to reduce…

Putnam Investments plans to introduce three new alternative types of mutual funds that will be managed by PanAgora Asset Management, a Boston firm that typically manages money for institutions and is majority-owned by Putnam. “They’ re obviously fairly sophisticated instruments,’’ said Scott C. Sipple, head of Global Investment Strategies at Putnam.

—President Donald Trump has approved disaster assistance to governments and certain nonprofits in nine Mississippi counties following April 30′ s tornado and weather damage. Counties approved are Adams, Calhoun, Carroll, Claiborne, Holmes, Jefferson, Montgomery, Webster and Yazoo. The federal government is still considering Mississippi’s request to…