Guaranteed. Lifetime. Income.
Those three words create the cornerstone for Americans seeking to protect their family’s financial future.
Americans can receive guaranteed lifetime income from an annuity, the only financial product in the marketplace that offers this financial protection and peace of mind.
June is Annuity Awareness Month, and it’s never been more important to highlight how annuities provide Americans with opportunities for lifetime income. Fewer employers offer traditional lifetime pension benefits nowadays. But with an annuity, anyone can create their own pension, including employees, gig workers and small business owners looking to sell their business and retire.
Thanks to robust consumer protections, savers can rest assured that financial professionals must act in the consumer’s best interest when offering recommendations about annuities. In the past year 11 states have adopted new laws or rules that incorporate the enhanced consumer protections in the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ updated model regulation on annuity transactions. Several other states are considering similar measures.
The state actions closely align with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation Best Interest, which took effect last year. These federal and state efforts look out for small- and moderate-income savers including under-resourced communities, unlike a fiduciary-only approach that all but eliminates the option of working with financial professionals compensated on a commission basis and discriminates against those unable to afford ongoing asset-management fees.
Everyone should have the right to choose who they want to advise them on retirement savings. Similarly, everyone should have options for how to pay for these services. With our country’s heightened focus on ways to promote racial equity, we should be working to close wealth gaps, not widen them.
ACLI supports plans and policies that enable all Americans to have access to more savings options. We oppose policies like an ill-conceived annuity tax proposal in Colorado that would inflict financial harm on some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens by taxing settlement funds that were intended to provide care and support for victims disabled by negligence. Now more than ever, we need to eliminate barriers for Americans to secure the peace of mind that comes from having guaranteed income for life from an annuity.
Susan K. Neely was President and CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), the nation’s leading trade association determined to help families live better lives by achieving financial security and certainty. As president and CEO, Neely drove public policy and advocacy on behalf of ACLI’s member companies that represent 93 percent of industry assets and serve 90 million families. She is CEO Emeritus through December, 2024.
