Where Individual Annuities Fit in the Retirement Pie

When members of Congress return from their summer recess, you’re supposed to be asking them to vote for the Secure Act bill, the RESA bill, or some other bill that contains provisions for expanding and improving employer-sponsored retirement plans.

There’s not much, if anything, in those bills aimed at increasing consumers’ access to, or interest in, individual annuities.

Why is it so hard to get people’s attention, even inside the financial services industry, and even from companies that issue billions and billions of dollars in individual annuities?

One possible reason: Your market is kind of small.

Annuities have been around since forever. Egyptians had annuities in the age of the pharaohs. Annuities give your clients a chance to pay extra to get solutions crafted to fit their own, individual income planning needs, with guarantees that may have limitations but offer more protection than products with no guarantees at all.

But, for a look at where individual annuities fit in the $29.1 trillion U.S. individual retirement planning asset share pie, see the slideshow above.

The slideshow is based on asset data compiled by the Investment Company Institute for the first quarter. The latest ICI retirement asset report is available here.

— Read New York Life’s CEO Still Likes the Retail Annuity Market, on ThinkAdvisor.

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