With Equity Inde Annuities, Talk Effective Participation

With equity index annuity sales surging, products proliferating, confusion reigning and regulators lurking, this may be the time for the industry to develop a common language to talk about index interest crediting.

Articles have been written and sales presentations developed by well-meaning folks giving lots of pearls of wisdom such as: “Only buy 100% participation products” or “Avoid spreads” or “Averaging is bad (or good)” or “This offers 36% first-year potential return.” Everyone seems to have an opinion on the good and bad. Often, misperceptions multiply and eventually become conventional wisdom.

What often seems missing from the discussion is the index annuity’s effective participation (EP)–the actual portion of index growth as a percentage of total index growth between 2 points in time. EP is a look-back measure, but it can yield clues as to a product’s realistic potential return.

Consider a product that claims 100% participation and imposes a cap; this product simply will not achieve 100% participation in all market scenarios. Likewise, if a product offers 100% participation on some sort of averaging basis, true full participation will still not be achieved. By contrast, an EP assessment will help the advisor demonstrate a more likely participation result over time. That will help both advisor and client make a more informed decision.

Example: Take an equity index annuity purchased on Jan 1, 2003. In the following 12 months, a direct investment in the S&P index would have returned 26.4%. Table 1 shows what the EPs of various equity indexed product designs would be.

These results present a quite different and more realistic story about how indexed products perform, and they provide a common comparative measure for discussion. Most importantly, they create a common denominator instead of reliance on the product’s often confusing and misleading crediting terminology.

Does this mean that any one method was necessarily better than another? Not at all. Different markets produce different results for various designs, but one design rarely works well in all types of markets.

Now, let’s add 2004 into the mix. Here the S&P returned 8.99% from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 for a total of 37.75% over the 2 years, 2003 and 2004. Table 2 shows the EPs for various designs over the 2 years.

Again, the main point of the examples is not that one design is better or whether the examples reflect actual rates, but rather how using EP provides a more realistic retrospective picture of potential. Over the longer term, some products take advantage of annual reset capability, a feature that can bring the overall participation rate higher by eliminating negative years completely.

Why then, is there a continued push to inflate the prospects for ultimate crediting in index annuities? Carriers seem to be in a race to the bottom to see who can come up with clever ways to deflect the conversation away from the fact that full market participation is not possible. Is that a bad thing? No, the focus for selling these products has been, and always should be to:

o Link interest crediting to market growth, allowing a reasonable chance to outperform similar fixed vehicles.