According to Donna Mitchell’s “Annuities Could Get Boost From Small Business Legislation” in Financial Planning, the annuity industry’s recovery is being helped by President Obama’s administration. After his Middle Class Task Force started promoting the use of annuities for the guaranteed lifetime income in January, the next step appears to be the new law called the Small Business Jobs Act. Investors with non-qualified deferred annuities will now be able to take a portion of that annuity and purchase an immediate annuity while keeping the deferred product to grow money tax-deferred. The point of this law is to encourage Americans to be more prepared for their retirement.
This new law is helping individual advisers and clients become more open to variable annuities, as the products have seen an increase in sales from year to year. Independent broker-dealers are obtaining more of their revenue from annuities than before as well. All annuities accounted for 26.2% of their 2009 revenue, with 89% of that total being from variable annuity products. Since many small businesses cannot afford to offer retirement plans, workers in these businesses will now be able to have greater flexibility with their annuities outside of the office. They no longer have to worry about large surrender charges and fees associated with changing annuity products because of this law. There are likely more changes to come in the annuity industry from President Obama’s administration.
