Wink is out with its new annuity sales and market report for the third quarter, showing how the rise and fall of interest rates, stock prices and retirement savers' level of exuberance affected the trim of the issuers' sails.
Overall U.S. individual annuity sales rose to $117 billion, up 1.6% from the total for the third quarter.
Sales of fixed indexed annuities fell 12%, to $32 billion.
Sales of fixed indexed annuities' popular siblings, registered index-linked annuities — annuities that are registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and may or may not expose the holder to investment-related loss of value — jumped 24%, to $20 billion.
A somewhat lower-profile product, the multi-year guaranteed annuity contract, continued to dominate the annuity market share pie chart, with $43 billion in sales, up 0.6% year-over-year.
Issuers of MYGA contracts promise to pay a fixed rate of return for set number of years. They and their reinsurers are keenly aware of the weight of the obligations they have assumed. Some may make conscious decisions to let MYGA sales soar or make MYGA sales fall during a quarter, because of their views about the state of competition in the MYGA market and how easy it is to back the contracts with assets they like.
For a look at the five issuers that led in MYGA sales in the third quarter, which combined for about $18 billion in transactions, see the gallery accompanying this article.
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