Martello Re Completes $14B MassMutual Reinsurance Deal: Annuity Moves

What You Need to Know

Martello Re is hungry for more annuity reinsurance business.
The Reliance Standard annuity offers a fixed interest strategy and five indexed strategies.
RetireOne and Midland National have expanded the Constance CDA investment menu.

Martello Re has completed a previously announced deal to reinsure $14 billion in fixed annuities and non-variable indexed annuities for a Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company subsidiary.

The MassMutual subsidiary will continue to service the annuity contracts.

Martello Re is a new reinsurer based in Hamilton, Bermuda.

The company said it’s now one of the largest and most well-capitalized life and annuity reinsurers in Bermuda.

Dennis Ho, the company’s CEO, indicated in a comment, included in the deal completion announcement, that Martello Re wants to complete transactions similar to the MassMutual deal with other annuity issuers.

The company’s mission is to “help insurers grow their business profitably and consistently, while ensuring they are well-positioned to deliver on all of their promises to policyholders,” Ho said.

The deal could support and increase the availability of annuities, by giving life insurers a mechanism they can use to pass some of the risk associated with writing annuities on to another company.

In other annuity moves news…

Reliance Standard

Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, a Philadelphia-based company, has introduced The Reliance Accumulator annuity contract.

The product is a non-variable indexed annuity.

Reliance Standard also issues the Keystone indexed annuity, and it says it will continue to sell that contract, too.

RetireOne and Midland National

RetireOne and MidLand National Life Insurance have added investment strategies from Dimensional Fund Advisors to the Constance CDA contingent deferred annuity.

The Constance CDA contract pays no commissions and is designed for sale through RIAs.

An RIA can use the Constance CDA contract to wrap a brokerage account, an individual retirement arrangement or a Roth IRA. Midland National, an arm of Sammons, says the CDA contract will provide lifetime income protection.

The Dimensional Fund Advisors addition offers Constance CDA users access to three asset-allocation models and 38 mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.