Joe Biden Owns a Security Benefit Variable Annuity

The 2020 presidential race has raised many important questions about the future of the country, and the world, and given a financial professionals a chance to peek inside the candidates’ portfolios.

All of the four major party presidential and vice presidential candidates — President Donald Trump; Vice President Mike Pence; Joe Biden, the former vice president; and Sen. Kamala Harris, D.-Calif. — have filed U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) Form 278 disclosure filings with the OGE. Biden and Harris have also posted financial disclosures on their website.

Resources

The U.S. Office of Government Ethics officials’ disclosures search collection is available here.
Links to Biden-Harris campaign financial disclosures are available here.
Kamala’s Harris public financial disclosure report is available here.
An article about the Trump Organization’s employee benefit plan filings is available here.

One interesting thing about the filings is how different they all are.

Pence appears to have the simplest finances. He lists his main non-employment-related financial asset as being a U.S. bank account holding less than $15,000 in cash. He also lists between $100,001 and $250,000 in student loan debt.

The president, clearly, has the most complex finances, including a tenancy in common for 1290 Avenue of the Americas in New York, which is the home of Equitable. The president lists that asset as having a value over $50 million and as generating more than $5 million in annual income.

One thing all four candidates have in common is access to a defined benefit pension plan. Three of the four candidates are pension plan participants. The fourth has a spouse who participates in two defined benefit plans.

For a glimpse of the candidates’ pension plan arrangements, see the slideshow above. Wiggle your pointer over the first slide to make the control arrows how up.

The defined benefit plans may give all four candidates a personal stake in efforts to shore up U.S. pension plans, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

Three of the four candidates — Pence, Biden and Harris — participate in 457 plans. Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, a partner at a law firm, appears to be the only candidate or spouse with a 401(k) defined contribution retirement plan.

Harris and her husband took a $9,750 self-employed health insurance deduction for 2019, according to a copy of the couple’s tax return posted on the Biden-Harris campaign website.

Biden’s Life Insurance and Annuities

It’s possible that some of the candidates and spouses have types of insurance that don’t show up in the disclosure filings, either because reporting of those types of coverage is not required, or because the products are held inside arrangements set up in a such a way that the contents need not be disclosed on the disclosure forms.

Biden appears to the only candidate or spouse who lists life insurance and annuities in the disclosures.

He says he owns six whole life policies issued by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company.

He gives the estimated value of each policy in terms of asset value ranges.

The total asset value of the MassMutual whole life policies could range from $48,006 to $195,000.

Biden also owns a variable annuity issued by a company in the Security Benefit Group.

He says he has $15,001 to $50,000 in assets in the annuity’s BNY Mellon IP Technology Growth subaccount.

He has anywhere from $1,001 to $15,000 in assets in each of the following subaccounts:

Invesco VI Health Care
Guggenheim VIF High Yield
Janus Hend VIT Enterprise
Janus Hend VIT Research
Western Asset Variable Global High Yield Bond
MFS VIT Utilities
Guggenheim VIF Styleplus Mid Growth
Guggenheim VIF S-Mid Cap Value
Guggenheim VIF Small Cap Value
Guggenheim VIF All Cap Value.

The total value of the assets in the variable annuity could range from $26,012 to $215,000.

Biden’s Other Assets

Biden also reported having between $952,006 to $2,030,000 in accounts at six banks, savings institutions and credit unions: M&T Bank, Wilmington Savings and Fund Society, TD Bank, PNC Bank, U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union, and New Castle County Schools Employee Federal Credit Union.

Biden’s retirement account assets include $15,001 to $50,000 in the TIAA-CREF Lifecycle Index 2010 Fund, and he has given CeltiCapri Corp, a company he uses to manage his speaking and writing engagements, a value of $250,001 to $500,000.

— Read Biden and Trump Agree on Role for Private Health Insurance, on ThinkAdvisor.

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