The market for registered index-linked annuities was ferociously competitive in the fourth quarter of 2025 — and some issuers took a deep breath and sold more, anyway.
The issuers that participated in Wink's latest annuity sales survey increased their RILA sales 24% between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the latest quarter, to $21 billion.
The top five issuers all increased their RILA sales at least 9% year over year, and two increased their sales more than 53%.
What it means: Life insurance and annuity issuers are still enthusiastic about selling retirement savers RILAs.
Whatever turmoil there might be in the world or capital-raising headaches that might be affecting the issuers, those issues do not seem to be having any noticeable impact on the supply of annuities.
For a look at the top five issuers, see the gallery accompanying this article.
RILA basics: RILAs pay crediting rates that can be tied to the performance of one or more investment market indexes, with or without value guarantees.
Because the products are registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, issuers charge separately for buffers, floors or other protections against value loss that they choose to sell.
In theory, the structure should make finding the derivatives needed to provide the buffers and guarantees easy and affordable.
One question for the RILA market, now that the sector is much bigger than it used to be, is how well the supply of suitable, attractively priced derivatives will match the demand if investment markets enter a new period of increased volatility.
The backdrop: Sales of all types of annuities Wink tracks increased 17% in the fourth quarter, year over year, to $117 billion.
Sales of multi-year guaranteed annuities, which pay a fixed rate for a specified number of years, rose 30%, to $38 billion.
Sales of fixed indexed annuities, which protect the contract value against investment-market-related losses and may provide a rate boost if one or more investment indexes perform well, rose 8.9%, to $35 million.
Sales of traditional variable annuities, which tie the crediting rate to the performance of funds that resemble mutual funds, rose 5.4%, to $19 billion.
Credit: MdSumon/Adobe Stock
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