What You Need to Know
- The sales total grew a little.
- Sales of the hot products increased by more than 40%, year over year.
- Sales of the other types products in the Wink data fell by more than 10%.
Low interest rate winds pushed U.S. individual deferred annuity sales way up or way down in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Overall sales increased 5.6%, according to new issuer survey data from Wink Inc.
But each individual type of annuity that Wink tracks experienced year-over-year sales growth over 40% or year-over-year sales shrinkage over 10%.
Wink uses the term “structured annuities” to refer to variable annuities that offer crediting rates tied to investment index performance.
Here’s a look at how sales of structured annuities and the other types of annuities Wink tracks changed between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the latest quarter:
- Structured Annuities: $8.4 billion (up 71%)
- Multi-Year Guaranteed Annuity contracts: $13 billion (up 45%)
- Traditional Variable Annuities: $19 billion (down 11%)
- Indexed Annuities Filed as Non-Variable Contracts: $15 billion (down 12%)
- Traditional Fixed Annuities: $474 million (down 31%)
Wink collected sales data for the latest quarter from 14 structured annuity issuers, 46 variable annuity issuers, 45 fixed annuity issuers, 61 indexed annuity issuers and 69 MYGA issuers.