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By 
November 10, 2022 at 01:16 PM
What You Need to Know
- Thanks to product developments and years of advocacy work, annuity solutions are subject to less undue investor skepticism.
- As investors grow more amiable to annuities, the main distribution chokepoint remains the retirement advisory community.
- To remain relevant, advisors must set aside their focus on pure accumulation and offer retirement income solutions.
Back in June 2018, a group of more than two dozen financial services companies came together to form the Alliance for Lifetime Income, with the objective of educating Americans about the importance of protected lifetime income solutions.
Since that time, the group has generated substantial online content, tools, thought leadership and even new terminology to simplify a complex (and at times controversial) topic. Now, in a new interview with ThinkAdvisor marking the group’s fifth anniversary in operation, Jean Statler, CEO at the Alliance for Lifetime Income, says 2023 will be a critical year for the group’s mission.
According to Statler, after years of being bashed by the likes of Ken Fisher and other well-known annuity skeptics, guaranteed income solutions have finally reached a level playing field in the retirement advisor community. As such, the ALI will be focusing its outreach efforts in 2023 on ensuring advisors understand the role of annuities in retirement portfolios.
Annuities’ Time to Shine?
“The public conversation around annuities has shifted from negative to positive in most circles,” Statler says. “Here in late 2022, most in the advisory community are now at least neutral when it comes to annuities. That’s a huge change that we have seen over the past five years.”
Another change seen in just the last year or two, Statler says, is the movement by major retirement plan recordkeepers towards “in-plan annuitization,” as demonstrated by Fidelity. Statler says retirement advisors must keep abreast of these developments, as there are likely to be impacts on the pace of rollovers and on investors’ decisions about where to custody assets.
