Symetra Life Insurance Adds Sales Execs

Symetra Life Insurance Company hired a sales leader for its eastern division and eight additional regional vice presidents to represent the company’s portfolio of annuity and life insurance products.

Louis Mastellone is Symetra’s eastern division sales manager of Life and Retirement Sales, with responsibility for sales planning and day-to-day management and training of 13 external wholesalers covering the eastern United States. He joins Symetra from Genworth Financial, where he was divisional vice president for the East Coast region and accountable for retirement income and protection sales through banks, wirehouses and independent firms. He previously served as a regional vice president for GE Financial Assurance, where he drove fixed annuity, variable annuity and mutual fund sales across its bank distribution network.   

The eight new regional VPs are: 

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  • Michael Butt (Territory: Michigan) — Butt joins Symetra from MassMutual Financial, where he was a regional sales director. He also has served as regional vice president at RiverSource Life Insurance Company and at Genworth Financial, with responsibility for annuity and single premium life insurance sales through the bank and broker-dealer channels.  
  • Mark Eberhart (Territory: Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia) — Eberhart most recently served as Midwest sales director at Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company. Previously, he was a regional vice president with Genworth Financial.  
  • Brock Lansdale (Territory: Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada) — Lansdale comes to Symetra from ING Financial, where he focused on variable, indexed, fixed and immediate annuity sales through independent, bank and regional wirehouse registered representatives. Lansdale previously was a divisional vice president with Aegon Financial Services Group.  
  • Marc McDaniels (Territory: Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin) — McDaniels most recently worked as a regional sales director for First Mercantile. He previously held external wholesaler roles at MassMutual Financial Group, Genworth Financial and Allianz Life, focusing on variable and fixed annuity sales.  
  • Ben Pintaric (Territory: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming) — Pintaric joins Symetra from Jackson National Life Insurance Company, where he served as an internal wholesaler. 
  • Mark Prazak (Territory: Southern California) — Prazak brings an extensive investment industry background to Symetra. Most recently, he was with Genworth Financial as regional vice president for Southern California and southern Nevada, responsible for immediate and variable annuity sales in the wirehouse channel. He also has served as divisional marketing director and senior wholesaler at AIG SunAmerica, where he led sales and marketing for the company’s variable annuity portfolio to 175 national and regional wirehouse offices across Southern California.  
  • Kevin Rooney (Territory: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska) — Rooney comes to Symetra from Prudential Annuities, where he was a producing divisional vice president, responsible for variable annuity sales in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. Rooney previously held regional sales and marketing roles with Lincoln Financial, U.S. Allianz Investor Services and The Hartford.  
  • Jesse Saenz (Territory: Louisiana, Southern Texas) — Saenz most recently served as national sales manager (southern U.S.) for American National Insurance Corporation, where he focused on fixed and equity-indexed annuity and life insurance product sales within the independent adviser channel. Previously, he was a regional vice president with RiverSource Distributors and a regional sales manager for Allstate Distributors, both in Houston. 

GAO: Retirement Shift Creates Disproportionate Benefits

The Government Accountability Office contends that the shift away from defined benefit retirement plans to more defined contribution plans has resulted in disproportionate benefits for American workers.

According to the GAO report, about 92% of newly formed plans in the period between 2003 and the end of 2007 were defined contribution (DC) plans, with the rest being defined benefit (DB) plans. Regarding the small percentage of new DB plans, professional groups such as doctors, lawyers, and dentists sponsored about 43% of new small DB plans, and more than 55% of new DB plan sponsors also sponsored DC plans. The GAO said the benefits of new DB plans disproportionately benefit workers at a few types of professional firms.  

In addition, most individuals who contributed at or above the 2007 statutory limits for DC contributions tended to have earnings that were at the 90th percentile ($126,000) or above for all DC participants, according to the GAO’s analysis of the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finance (SCF). Similarly, the GAO said, high-income workers have benefited the most from increases in the limits between 2001 and 2007. The agency found that men were about three times as likely as women to make so-called catch-up contributions when DC participants age 50 and older were allowed to contribute an extra $5,000 to their plans. 

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The report said several modifications to the Saver’s Credit—a tax credit for low-income workers who make contributions to a DC plan—could provide a sizeable increase in retirement income for some low wage workers, although this group is small. For example, under the GAO’s most generous scenario, Saver’s Credit recipients who fell in the lowest earnings quartile experienced a 14% increase in annual retirement income from DC savings, on average.  

The GAO concluded that the potential troubling consequences of the recent financial crisis may be obscuring concerns over the ability of the employer-provided pension system in helping moderate and low-income workers, including those with access to a plan, save enough for retirement.  

The GAO report is here.

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