According to a survey conducted by LIMRA, the key age group is the 55-59 year old American population of pre-retirees (see table below).  The survey found that this group has 146 billion in annuity business and almost half of this group (48%) said they are interested in purchasing an annuity for guaranteed income.  The members [...]

Celent, a research advisory unit of Oliver Wyman the management consulting firm, conducted a recent survey that found that there has been significant change as far as e-signatures are concerned in the life insurance industry.  Celent conducted the same survey in 2007 and found that since then changes have been occurring and now 55% of [...]

One of the common trends we have been seeing is more and more insurance carriers going digital.  Just this week, Celent, a research advisory unit of the management consulting firm Oliver Wyman reported approximately 55 percent of life insurance companies have adopted or are in the process of adopting e-applications for some of their products.  [...]

Financial giant Prudential made an announcement earlier this week that they are selling off a small part of their business, the wealth management services unit.  Financial services firm Envestnet will be the purchaser of the wealth management business for amounts close to $33 million.  The main reason for Envestnet’s interest in the wealth management business [...]

iPipline announced today that American Equity Investment Life Insurance Co. has selected to aggregate and distribute annuity product information through their Content Partner platform.  According to James Jones, SVP, Annuity New Business for American Equity, “Making our forms available on iPipeline’s platform is another way that American Equity can provide a high level of service.  [...]

According to a recent study conducted by InvestmentNews, smartphone and tablet usage is having a huge impact on the bottom line of advisory firms.  The study focused on top performing advisors from various advisory firms and found that 88% use smartphones and 65% use tablets in their practice.  The research aims to provide financial advisors [...]

With the lowest labor market participation rate since 1979 announced on Friday Aril 5, maybe all the laid off, underworked and underemployed entrepreneurs are creating websites.  According to Google, there are now 30 trillion websites throughout the world up from just 1 trillion sites just 10 years ago!  That’s thousands of websites for every citizen [...]

The Securities and Exchange Commission made an announcement Tuesday that they will now allow public companies to use social media in place of more formal websites for announcements.  According to an article written by Marcy Gordon “An SEC rule requires that all investors receive significant company information at the same time.  By allowing businesses to [...]

What might advertising look like by 2020? In a nutshell, marketing will transform from being a battle for the mind to becoming a battle for behaviors.   In traditional marketing, we ran mass advertising, targeted based on demos (product demonstrations to consumers) that was intended to change people’s attitudes about a brand. We measured effectiveness [...]

Earlier today, Forethought Financial Group released a statement that they will be teaming up with Aplifi, and moving towards electronic annuity applications.  Aplifi is a leading technology provider that focuses on life insurance and financial services markets.  According to Forethought, “putting our annuity products on the AFFIRM platform through Aplifi, was a key step in [...]