Hints and tips:
...AIG, Principal and Prudential declined to comment....
...Apollo struck a big reinsurance deal with Prudential in June, helping add $100bn to its assets in the second quarter....
...The low-yield environment has made it harder for groups selling annuities and other guaranteed-return products to make a profit....
...As well as its life insurance and annuity operations the New Jersey-based group is also the world’s ninth-biggest asset manager. It employs about 50,000 people....
...Shares in MetLife have returned 32 per cent since Mr Kandarian started in the top job in 2011, significantly less than the broader market, insurance industry indices and MetLife’s rival Prudential Financial...
...Those rules cover equity release mortgages, which Just sells as a way to invest the money it collects from annuity customers....
...Just Group had declined since July on worries that rules proposed by the Prudential Regulation Authority covering the treatment of equity release mortgages might dent its capital position and force a cash...
...As a result, the insurer mistakenly released funds from reserves that support future annuity payouts....
...Prudential Financial, the second biggest, took a $1.28bn hit, largely related to an opaque charge in its annuities business that several analysts said had little or no real bearing on the business....
...The M&A market for European annuities is growing....
...In many ways the big life insurance companies have moved on, selling a range of saving and investment products as well as annuities, which are designed to protect policyholders against living longer, not...
...Prudential is the corporate equivalent. The insurance, savings and investments group could be Miss Conviviality without a heftily-built annuities division in tow....
...Brighthouse will become one of the largest providers of annuities and life cover in the US, selling products such as variable annuities, which cater for the over-50s....
...American divisions of the UK’s Prudential, France’s Axa and Germany’s Allianz rank among the 10 largest US annuity writers....
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...VAs, which tend to be sold through financial advisers, are expected to be hit by proposals from the US Labor Department to tighten standards for distributors....
...The biggest as of the end of last year was Jackson National Life, an arm of the UK-listed Prudential, which has been taking market share....
...It is a big writer of “variable annuities”, which guarantee minimum returns to policyholders....
...Regulators have signalled that operations including types of variable annuities — an important product in the US — and trade credit insurance will be included, although the list has yet to be finalised....
...Regulators consider “variable annuities” that offer pension savers guaranteed returns — a widespread product in the US that is important to companies including MetLife, Prudential and Axa — to be “non traditional...
...Sam Woods, the Prudential Regulation Authority’s director of insurance supervision, said in a speech last month that the watchdog had no plan to use the new rules to force the industry to raise capital....
...He joined Michigan-based Jackson in 1995 as president of Jackson National Life Distributors, 11 years after the Pru bought the company for $610m....
...“This review emphasises that insurers should not regard customer outcomes as the responsibility of the distributor....
...Lucida, set up by former Prudential chief executive Jonathan Bloomer, warned of “unattractive economics” of pensions de-risking before selling itself to Rothesay’s FTSE 100-listed competitor Legal & General...
...Bruce Ferris, president of Prudential Annuities Distributors, said that savers are already well protected....
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