Talking Points

Tired of giving the same old presentations? Use these nuggets of information to spruce them up.
Reported by PLANADVISER Staff
  • Pension risk transfers: Eighty percent of defined benefit (DB) plan sponsors are interested in pension risk transfers (PRTs), yet only 50% are somewhat familiar with such products, a LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute survey of nearly 400 defined benefit sponsors found. The majority (55%) use a liability-driven investment (LDI) strategy to mitigate the financial risk of their DB plans.
  • Only 41% of advisers queried for the 2014 Trends in Investing Survey conducted by the Financial Planning Association said they currently use or recommend annuities, down from a high of 58% in the survey’s 2006 and 2008 editions. Additionally, 30% increased their use of passively managed funds in the past year, whereas only 18% increased their use of actively managed funds, and 39% plan to increase their use of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) over the next 12 months.
  • “Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.” —Winston Churchill
  • Forty-seven percent of both retirees and pre-retirees say that owning an annuity made them more confident that they could maintain their lifestyle in retirement, according to a study from the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute.
  • Today, about 20% of financial advisers say they are strongly concerned about volatility, the Fidelity Advisor Investment Pulse Survey found. This is down from nearly one-third at the start of the year, but up from about 15% in the third quarter of 2013, when U.S. equity markets were performing strongly.