2008 December | Annuity FYI Blog

Archive for December, 2008

ING Annuities & Retirement Units Split

Monday, December 8th, 2008

ING Group is reorganizing its American wealth management business, says Darla Mercado of InvestmentNews. The Dutch firm is dividing its U.S. unit into separate divisions for annuities, retirement services, investments, and insurance. ING’s largest businesses are its retirement and annuity units.

Darla also reports that ING has several new executives for these units. Wealth management CEO Kathleen Murthy is departing ING and her position will be replaced with separate CEOs for each division. Catherine Smith will be in charge of the U.S. retirement services division, while Butch Britton will take over from her as CEO of U.S. insurance. The new CEO of U.S. annuities is Bill Lowe.

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Variable Annuity Sales Drop in Q3, Say Insurers

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

LIMRA, a trade group of insurers, has just released their quarterly report for the life insurance industry. In the third quarter results, variable annuity options took a significant hit amid the recent stock market confusion.

According to their press release:

Variable annuity sales are off by 17%
Variable life insurance and variable universal life sales have dropped 33% in the last quarter.

LIMRA product research analyst Ashley Durham blames the struggling equity market for this decline.

On the other hand, sales of fixed annuities are up by 46% in Q3. The Hartford Courant reasons that this may be due to insurers taking on the investment risk of those products.

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