Asset Protection And What It Means To You
Two experts who believe that the life insurance industry’s picture is far brighter than it first appears are Paul Hoffman and Anthony M. Santomero of the Wharton School’s Financial Institutions Center. Their paper, “Life Insurance Firms in the Retirement Market: Is the News All Bad?” answers their own titular question with a decided “no.” Hoffman and Santomero point to a number of facts that, while not completely reassuring to the industry, definitely show some profitable opportunities. First of all, retirement planning is a huge and growing market. Contrary to reports that have appeared in the past, baby boomers are saving more rapidly than their parents. And, face it, they have to: The decline of defined benefit plans, which Americans once counted on so heavily for their golden years, demands that they look to other financial instruments to protect their futures. That opens up new sales opportunities for group and individual retirement plans sold by financial companies, including insurers. And annuities, which are insurers’ biggest retirement-oriented product, are growing in importance as a share of Americans’ wealth. Moreover, annuities have remained stable as a percentage of retirement assets. Meanwhile, mutual funds and brokerage firms picked up more than 43% of the depository institutions’ drop in IRA market share, increasing their own share from 15.8% to 37.9% for mutual funds and 14.7% to 35.8% in the case of brokerages. Insurers’ share of the IRA market actually fell from 10.4% in 1990 to 7.8% in 1996. A disturbing development for insurance companies is their loss of share of revenue, from 55% of sales fees for variable annuities in 1994 to only 43% the next year. The Wall Street Journal has predicted that insurers’ share of these fees could fall to 30% by the year 2000. For the life insurance industry, the stakes are clear. While its decline in competitiveness is not as serious as widely proclaimed, its share of the retirement market has been falling by more than 1% a year in recent years. Because its income from annuities has surpassed its income from life insurance since 1985, clearly it must continue to pursue the retirement segment. Now, however, it also needs to look to ways of solidifying and perhaps expanding its share of the 401(k) and IRA niches. In an effort to maximize returns, many funds turned away from Jones’ strategy, which focused on stock picking coupled with hedging, and chose instead to engage in riskier strategies based on long-term leverage. These tactics led to heavy losses in 1969-70, followed by a number of hedge fund closures during the bear market of 1973-74. Hedge funds have evolved significantly since 1949. Modern hedge funds offer a variety of strategies, including many that do not involve traditional hedging techniques. The industry has also rapidly grown, with recent estimations pegging its size at $1 trillion - quite the leap from the $100,000 used to start the first fund half a century ago. Visit: Delicious Financial Advisor and also Delicious Financial Advisors |