Close Close
Popular Financial Topics Discover relevant content from across the suite of ALM legal publications From the Industry More content from ThinkAdvisor and select sponsors Investment Advisor Issue Gallery Read digital editions of Investment Advisor Magazine Tax Facts Get clear, current, and reliable answers to pressing tax questions
Luminaries Awards
ThinkAdvisor
Stack of coins with up arrows

Life Health > Annuities > Variable Annuities

Nationwide Updates Variable Annuity Income Riders

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

Nationwide has updated some of its variable annuity income guarantee riders.

The Columbus, Ohio-based company changed the riders available with its Nationwide Advisory Retirement Income Annuity contract — a product aimed at fee-based advisors — as well as contracts designed to pay commissions.

What it means: Traditional variable annuity sales have dropped in recent years.

The Nationwide rider refresh suggests that insurers will still have products on the shelves when the sales pendulum swings back in traditional variable contracts’ favor.

The backdrop: Rising interest rates and investment market volatility have increased the client appeal of fixed annuities in recent years.

For insurers still in the variable annuity market, the idea of tying product returns to the performance of investment indexes, rather than bundles of stocks, has been hot.

U.S. sales of individual variable indexed annuities, or registered index-linked annuity contracts, increased to $21.8 billion the first half of the year, from $20.4 billion in the first half of 2022, according to LIMRA.

Over the same period, sales of traditional variable annuities fell to $26.1 billion, from $35 billion.

Fee-based variable annuities accounted for just 5.4% of the deferred individual annuity sales reported to Wink, a life and annuity sales tracking firm, for the second quarter.

New York state: Nationwide replaced three lifetime income riders available in New York state with the L.inc+ Empire rider.

The rider lets clients invest up to 80% of their annuity value in stock-linked funds, and it can provide guaranteed lifetime income. It’s available with the Nationwide Designation 2.0 variable annuities.

For fee-based advisors:  For New York state advisors who want to use annuities designed with fee-based advisors in mind, Nationwide is replacing the Nationwide Lifetime Income Rider Advisory and Retirement Income Developer riders with the L.inc+ Empire Advisory rider.

Nationwide will offer the L.inc+ Empire Advisory rider with the Nationwide Advisory Retirement Income Annuity contract

For fee-based advisors in the rest of the country, Nationwide is making the L.inc+ Core Advisory and L.inc+ Accelerated Advisory guaranteed income riders available with the NARIA contract.

The additions mean that clients who pay for one of the new riders can invest up to 100% of the NARIA contract value in stock-linked investment options while trying to accumulate contract value. The clients can then use the rider to create a lifetime stream of income.

Credit: Adobe Stock


NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.