by GarySpicuzza » Fri Mar 06, 2009 08:54 pm
Source LINK.
Fourth Quarter Index Annuity Sales Sharply Up
The AnnuitySpecs.com 4th Quarter Advantage Index Sales & Market Report shows fourth quarter 2008 index annuity sales were $7253 million compared with sales of $6796 million for the previous quarter. Fourth quarter sales were up 13% when compared with the same period one year ago.
The top ten carriers for the third quarter:
Aviva $2,270,982,682;
Allianz Life 1,078,054,758;
American Equity 531,512,693;
ING 399,599,000;
Midland National 369,300,000;
North American Company 313,000,000;
Jackson National 311,018,872;
Lincoln National 289,328,879;
LSW (National Life) 271,234,975;
Old Mutual 234,699,982.
2008 Index annuity sales were $26,752,197, a 6% increase over 2007.
Winners & Losers
Aviva/American Investors 4th Qtr sales more than doubled from a year ago; Old Mutual sales fell by nearly half. For 2008 North American Company, Aviva and National (LSW) Life increased sales by over 50%, while National Western dipped 42%, Old Mutual declined 38%, and Sun Life dropped 34%
Please note.... not one (1) client has lost one (1) dime of their principal or past gains because of the continuing Wall St. meltdown.
Our client's money is SAFE and sound with Professional Insurance Agents who are trained and understand risk management.
Remember, a 25% loss of principal in one year will require a 47% gain the following year just to stay even with a SAFE money savings instrument that's just limping along at 5% per year.
Fourth Quarter Index Annuity Sales Sharply Up
The AnnuitySpecs.com 4th Quarter Advantage Index Sales & Market Report shows fourth quarter 2008 index annuity sales were $7253 million compared with sales of $6796 million for the previous quarter. Fourth quarter sales were up 13% when compared with the same period one year ago.
The top ten carriers for the third quarter:
Aviva $2,270,982,682;
Allianz Life 1,078,054,758;
American Equity 531,512,693;
ING 399,599,000;
Midland National 369,300,000;
North American Company 313,000,000;
Jackson National 311,018,872;
Lincoln National 289,328,879;
LSW (National Life) 271,234,975;
Old Mutual 234,699,982.
2008 Index annuity sales were $26,752,197, a 6% increase over 2007.
Winners & Losers
Aviva/American Investors 4th Qtr sales more than doubled from a year ago; Old Mutual sales fell by nearly half. For 2008 North American Company, Aviva and National (LSW) Life increased sales by over 50%, while National Western dipped 42%, Old Mutual declined 38%, and Sun Life dropped 34%
Please note.... not one (1) client has lost one (1) dime of their principal or past gains because of the continuing Wall St. meltdown.
Our client's money is SAFE and sound with Professional Insurance Agents who are trained and understand risk management.
Remember, a 25% loss of principal in one year will require a 47% gain the following year just to stay even with a SAFE money savings instrument that's just limping along at 5% per year.
Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 05:52 pm Post Subject:
Gary, I think the calculations for the Last quarter has major significance over the past 3 quarters, as it there was the highest fallout in this qtr. Although we assume the effect of figures being manipulated sharply to some extent, we can guess that still the hopes are alive. Thanks to the vision of these insurance majors.
Additionally, such figures are also important to nullify those fear factors of the market. Perhaps the fear was the reason, that has affected more than the real scenario e.g. tightened rules of loans etc. It is a great pleasure that insurance companies are taking lead to have "Feel better" situation.
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:26 pm Post Subject:
It is a great pleasure that insurance companies are taking lead to have "Feel better" situation.
VIJAYRAJ, those numbers above aren't about "feeling better."
They are financial facts.
The Broker-Dealer fraud merchants of Wall St. have finally been exposed for what they are.... FRAUD MERCHANTS. The American public is no longer going to put their money with these fraud merchants.
Only the tip of the FRAUD MERCHANT iceberg has been exposed and you'll see by the end of this year perp walk, after perp walk, after perp walk and another perp walk as these Broker-Dealers and their FINRA "Registered Representatives" are carted off to jail one by one.
I have no idea what you are talking about with these comments:
Although we assume the effect of figures being manipulated sharply to some extent, we can guess that still the hopes are alive....
Additionally, such figures are also important to nullify those fear factors of the market.
If someone had $100,000 invested with the Broker-Dealer Fraud Merchants and now only has $61,000 LEFT.....and they want to PROTECT what they have left with an actuarially sound financial instrument such as a FIXED Annuity, then of course the strongest companies that have the best products on the market are going to show significant gains.
This isn't nullifying fear factors of the market, it's the final realization by many they've been played for a sucker AGAIN by the Wall St. FRAUD MERCHANTS.
...and who does the Gubment bailout with phony money by way of "printing" worthless checks?.......the exact same financial whores who created the problem in the first place....AIG, Citigroup, et al.
A United States Government check can't bounce. The United States Government writes the check, AIG deposits that check into their General Account to pay its bills, the Government calls THAT a "LOAN".... then the news media reports it as "taxpayer money" when in fact it's phony money created by Administrative Decree.
You can't get out of debt by borrowing money and you can't sustain an economy by having the Government print money by way of writing checks to bankrupt companies.
Any company, and any state government who accepts these phony United States of America Treasury checks is part of the problem and are in fact growing the financial cancer Washington, D.C. itself has created.
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 03:34 pm Post Subject:
I was not trying to focus on the negative side hence quoted that way.
Actually I was talking of the game of statistics in which the figures are modified sharlply to a fewer extent. Most peole like me who has workd for a professional organizations can have an idea of it. In fact there is a case of Satyam Infotech in which they had experimented this. It is banned from NASDAQ today. Yet they were a good brand but by habit they had shown good figures to attract the shareholders ( a calculated risk) auditing processes. But the time in recession led the situation unhandled as the graph dipped drastically, and those surged figures (every year) could not be accomodated further. The CEO surrendered.
It would be a bold step to doubt, but we must have cushion for such things. Besides, the auditing standards have undergone revolution nowadays. I appraise those figures and confident to agree that we are safe with the results.
Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 04:50 pm Post Subject:
PEN offers preset appointments for selling indexed annuities for agents. contact them at policyxnet@yahoo.com
Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 02:16 am Post Subject:
Gary . . .
You are dead on target about Treasury's ability to write worthless checks beyond the wildest imaginations of the Dems/Reps/Indeps currently occupying the seats in the Capitol. The problem is, even in the security of a fixed annuity, that when the toilet paper is worth more than the cotton on which the currency is printed, even the lifetime cashflow from the annuity will not be enough.
This is the substance that most people are missing in all the rhetoric of "stimulus" and "healthcare reform". The "gubment" speaks of the $16,000,000,000 it has "earned" from the bail-outs, but the fact remains that $16,000,000,000 pales in comparison to the $1,000,000,000,000+ that has been "cashed" and will never be recovered.
And the nonsense that "healthcare reform" will "save $160,000,000,000 to $1,000,000,000,000" over ten years does nothing to mitigate the trillion$ that will be expended in the same timeframe. It's all an accounting sham.
The same thing that got us into this mess in the first place. Only this time it's the Gubment running the Ponzi scheme instead of Bernie M., AIG, GM . . . .
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 05:11 am Post Subject:
The Broker-Dealer fraud merchants of Wall St. have finally been exposed for what they are.... FRAUD MERCHANTS. The American public is no longer going to put their money with these fraud merchants.
Only the tip of the FRAUD MERCHANT iceberg has been exposed and you'll see by the end of this year perp walk, after perp walk, after perp walk and another perp walk as these Broker-Dealers and their FINRA "Registered Representatives" are carted off to jail one by one.
Wow really? Are you one of those guys I saw on that Dateline special with the FRUAD MERCHANT insurance salesmen pushing equity indexed annuities as the "ratchet" annuity and talking about the B- credit rating the FDIC has? :oops: :roll: :lol:
If someone had $100,000 invested with the Broker-Dealer Fraud Merchants and now only has $61,000 LEFT.....and they want to PROTECT what they have left with an actuarially sound financial instrument such as a FIXED Annuity, then of course the strongest companies that have the best products on the market are going to show significant gains.
Strongest? Aviva? Not hardly a pillar of strength.
You want to sell fixed products, no problem. I do a lot of fixed annuity business, I won't touch indexed products. Too much complexity, sounds good on paper, works terribly in practice. I looked at JNL's products--great company and much more solid than Aviva--they have a product with the ability to get a 24 pt interest rate in one year. The conditions that need to be met for that to happen have not happen at any point during the past twenty years.
If you need low risk you should be in something fixed. If not, variable is your vessel, but it comes with risks attached. There is no free lunch, stop pretending like there is.
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 01:09 pm Post Subject:
BNTRS, like you, I don't sell fixed indexed products, but it's simply because my B/D won't allow me to do so.
Keep in mind that an indexed annuity is a fixed product. It simply has a different crediting method. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these products for people who are looking for fixed products. In general, indexed annuities are appropriate whenever traditional fixed annuities are appropriate.
They are simply fixed annuities that give the person the possibility of getting a higher rate of return than traditional fixed annuities and in exchange, they might get a lower rate of return.
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 04:12 pm Post Subject:
I'm not taking issue with the product as much as I am with the suggestion that the securities industry is occupied with criminals. I don't have a heavy reliance on stocks, but I have a special hatered for agents who sell EIA under the guise that they are the answer to getting market like returns without the risk, it couldn't be further from the truth.
I have a friend that got burned by an agent who replaced a life policy he had with an indexed UL. She took him out of a VUL where he had lost some money and put him in a product with much higher COIS, a crediting rate for the next 5 years of 5% (the market's up 20% right now; how much of that did he get/will he get?), and he paid surrender charges to do it. I look at issues like this and it's hard to fight the push to make equity indexed a regulated product. If I had attempted to replace his VUL with a new one, I would have had the transaction denied, but my B/D. If he wanted security, he could have changed his allocation inside the VUL.
I had a conversation once with Aviva about the equity indexed products. I asked the lady where they cam up with the basis for their crediting rate on their illustations. She told me it was from the S&P 500, which had an average return north of 8% so they were conservative at 7.75. I then asked if she knew what impact dividends had on that "yield" and if she realized that simply following the move in the index would not give her the same results, there was silence, followed by that's why we're not illustrating 8. If you remove the dividend, you take away half of the yield, and in some decades, you have a negative yield where it otherwise would have been slightly positive.
The product is gimmicky and at times I really wish we'd pass laws making insurance agents fiduciaries.
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 04:31 pm Post Subject:
Like you, I often have a problem with how they are sold. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Garys out there.
However, the products do have their place. If I could sell them, I probably would. I think the appropriate market for equity indexed annuities isn't very large, but it does exist.
Making insurance agents fiduciaries does absolutely nothing. Ethics come from within. A crook who will rip off old ladies is a crook. A fiduciary responsibility changes nothing.
Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 02:37 pm Post Subject:
I just shit my pants!
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