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American Life Puts S&P 500 ESG Index on the Menus: Annuity Moves

By Allison Bell

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What You Need to Know

  • American Life is the company that announced the risk-sharing deal with an American Enterprise Group subsidiary last summer.
  • Great American, which is now part of MassMutual, has introduced a fee-based fixed annuity.
  • Security Benefit has added two relatively new managers to the menus of two variable annuity products.

American Life & Security Corp. is working to get attention in the annuity market by courting socially conscious investors.

The Lincoln, Nebraska-based Midwest Holding subsidiary has added the S&P 500 ESG index to the menus for its American Select fixed indexed annuity products.

Managers of the S&P indexes introduced the index, which includes S&P 500 companies that meet the managers’ environmental, social and governance standards, in 2019.

The American Life annuities are the first nonvariable indexed annuities that offer the S&P 500 ESG Index on the investment index menu, according to American Life.

American Life has also added the Goldman Sachs Xenith Index to the menus for non-variable indexed annuities. The index uses an economic indicator reflecting future economic strength, and allocations between gold and copper, to try to adjust asset allocations to reflect ideas about how the economy might perform in the future.

Midwest Holding is trying to turn American Life into a much bigger player. It announced a deal in July 2021 to share up to $100 million of the risk associated with writing multi-year guaranteed annuities and fixed income annuities with American Republic. American Republic is part of American Enterprise Group.

Great American and Security Benefit are two other companies with annuity product news.

Great American

Great American Life Insurance — a Cincinnati-based insurer that is now a subsidiary of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance — has introduced a fee-based fixed annuity aimed at RIAs.

The new Advantage 5 Advisory contract will guarantee returns for five years.

Great American said it has designed the contract to plug into the systems RIAs often use for portfolio management, reporting and billing.

Great American also offers nonvariable indexed annuities aimed at RIAs.

Security Benefit

Security Benefit — a Topeka, Kansas-based insurer — has updated the fund menus of its EliteDesigns and EliteDesigns II variable annuities to appeal to annuity holders who want alternatives to the usual managers.

The company has added the Donoghue Forlines Momentum VIT Fund, the Donoghue Forlines Dividend VIT Fund and the LHA Tactical Beta Variable Series Fund to the menus.

The managers of the Donoghue funds hope to manage risk by moving up to 100% of assets into short-term Treasuries when intermediate term trends suggest investors should hunker down.

The LHA fund manager also has a strategy to try to stick with the market when it goes up and to avoid going down when it goes down.

(Photo: Emilia Mariana Ungur/Shutterstock)

Allison Bell

Think_Allison

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