Retirement benefits

AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company has introduced a structured investment option for its EQUI-VEST® series of variable deferred annuities available to employer-sponsored retirement savings plans.

The future of the investment advisory industry depends on reducing the cost of doing business, said Mark Casady, Chairman and CEO of LPL Financial, in the opening keynote at the Money Management Institute’s 2011 annual convention, held last week in Boston.

A pension expert panned federal lawmakers’ efforts to increase oversight of state and local governments’ public pension plans.

With the equity markets’ recent woes in the past, variable annuity sales perked up in 2010, according to the Insured Retirement Institute in Washington, D.C.

Payroll and benefits outsourcing provider Paychex has acquired online 401(k) administrator ePlan Services.

The vast majority of U.S. benefits managers reported that their organizations do not do enough to help employees make critical decisions at the point of retirement, according to new survey commissioned by Transamerica Retirement Management.

Retirement plan participants who don’t own a long-term care insurance policy and instead choose to self-insure for any LTCI needs in the future run the risk of seeing their life savings decimated by major medical expenses, cautions Jonas Roeser, senior vice president of marketing and operations for LTC Financial Partners LLC.

In all sectors of the financial services industry, there is an almost maniacal quest for "alpha," or performing above the norm. Careers, fortunes and even companies are made or broken on their ability to deliver alpha.

With millions of baby boomers on the brink of retirement and the effects of the economic meltdown in 2008 that left many employees with depleted 401(k) account balances, helping employees manage their money into retirement is a growing concern for employers.Once employees make the move from accumulating to drawing down their assets, the focus shifts from maximizing the growth rate of those assets to maximizing the ability to sustain income from them over long periods of time.

Exchange-traded funds are likely to grab a “significant” share of the 401(k) market in coming years, according to Skip Schweiss, president of TD Ameritrade Trust Co.

Those who operate a retirement plan face significant potential liability and risk, cautions a new Lockton report.

Even though 68% of workers are saving for retirement, nearly half (46%) have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 50% are not confident they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, a survey by the Employee Benefits Research Institute found.

A majority of Americans find retirement planning confusing and want additional help, a study by the ING Retirement Research Institute conducted by the Boston Consulting Group found.

The decline in plan sponsor appetite to change recordkeepers has dropped at a steady rate, not in spikes, which makes it likely that we will not see a dramatic increase any time soon. Meanwhile, many of the larger, more established recordkeepers are having record years; that means the rich keep getting richer while the rest are suffering.

Without delving too deeply into philosophy, it is probably safe to say that some people are compelled to do the right thing only because of the fear of punishment. As a young child, if I had the opportunity to take an extra cookie and not get caught, I may very well have taken full advantage of the situation. However, more often than not, the fear of getting caught with my hand in the cookie jar prevented me from doing it.

From analyzing the developing definition of fiduciary to discussing the best ways for advisers to differentiate themselves from the competition, the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries' "10th anniversary 401(k) SUMMIT" gave more than 950 attendees plenty of tricks of the trade to improve their business and stay informed on industry developments. Held March 6-8 in Las Vegas, the SUMMIT drew a range of retirement advisers, recordkeepers, plan administrators and others from across the country.

Standard & Poor's, the world's leading index provider and publisher of the widely followed Standard & Poor's Index Versus Active Fund scorecard series, has launched the industry's first comprehensive, periodic scorecard for target-date mutual funds. The S&P Indices Target-Date Scorecard provides performance comparisons, equal- and asset-weighted peer averages, and volatility comparisons for U.S. target-date funds versus their relative S&P Target-Date Index.

Insurance companies and investment firms offering retirement services to companies large and small are learning that attention to detail and improved communication with the plan sponsors and, indirectly, plan participants can dramatically improve their customer retention and satisfaction rates.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s retirement services unit is generating significant new business, much of it from existing clients of the bank.

American workers exited 2010 with more than $10.2 trillion invested in employer-sponsored retirement plans, up10% from the $9.3 trillion in play at the close of 2009, according to a new report from Chicago-based investor consultant Spectrem Group.