Tips For Buying A High Interest Annuity
February 16. 2010

By Brenne Meirowitz

Are you looking for high interest annuities? Annuities are considered by some investment consultants to be one of the best forms of financial protection that an individual can have.

Annuities usually have a death benefit clause, but they are actually quite different from insurance policies. You may also consider placing your investment into a trust.

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Posted in Define Annuity, Explain Annuities, High Interest Annuities | No Comments »
Looking For High Interest Annuities?
July 22nd, 2009

Are you looking for high interest annuities? If so, you may be also looking for your money when it’s time to cash out! In times of market volatility, financial service companies are being forced to lower the strength of their guarantees.

This is due to increasing costs and risks of their own. This includes your local bank as well as newly restructured investment banks. According to Leslie Scism’s Wall Street Journal article dated April 6, 2009, “More than 70% of financial advisers in a recent survey said they were concerned about the risks insurers have taken on with guaranteed-minimum variable annuities — and nearly a third said they doubted the insurers themselves understood those risks.” Accordingly, sales of fixed interest annuities skyrocketed 74% in the early part of 2009.

So, where does that leave the small investor when it comes to choosing a retirement plan? Should you choose a variable high interest rate annuity or go for a more conservative, lower rate fixed interest annuity?  Deferred, High Interest Annuities often offer a high teaser rate, but then readjust yearly based on market conditions.

Posted in Pain Suffering Settlements
Buyer Of Structured Settlement
January 30th, 2010

A buyer of structured settlement is buying the future payments from your structured settlement, annuity, or annuity settlement. The buyer will pay you a cash value lump sum in lieu of your future payments.

Millions of Americans have some sort of structured settlement for which they are receiving regular payments. Many are from accident injuries, with the injured party opting for compensation through a structured settlement. This type of settlement provides a regular stream of payments, often over many years.

Other types of structured settlements are lottery or other prize winnings where the payout is in the form of an annuity that pays smaller monthly amounts.

For the buyer of structured settlements to buy your payments and pay you cash, you would be selling all the future payments from your structured settlement. The buyer will then pay you cash in a lump sum for those payments. You get the cash you wanted, in a lump sum, while the buyer takes over collecting the payments.

While this type of smaller, regular payments works well for some, many people find that they need larger sums of cash in the near term to pay for things such as debt reduction, medical expenses, college tuition for a family member, a down payment for the purchase of a home, or perhaps to start a business or even take a vacation.

When considering a company that buys structured settlements and annuity payments, you should consider some important factors. The first thing is to discover what types of programs are offered. Most typical are the programs that offer lump sums of cash in exchange for a continual payment distribution. Before committing to this, you should get in writing what percentage the structured settlement buyer will take from the total amount of the payment distribution. No two annuities are the same, and an underwriting department can customize each transaction for the client. Most of the time, the distribution will be exchanged for 50% of the total amount or less.

Keep in mind that these sorts of transactions can take place anywhere from 4-8 weeks once the process has begun. Of course, since each settlement is different, completion times can vary.

Since you are sometimes dealing in rather large sums, a reputable buyer settlement annuity payments should encourage you to seek the advice of a lawyer before signing over any distributions. An attorney should always review any agreement before signing.

A reputable buyer should also have been in business for while with certifiable successful transactions in the past. At least one referral should be found outside of the potential program being considered as to verify, on a personal level, the validity of the organizations claim.

Most programs will be able to accommodate the clients funding needs. The lump sum disbursement can be in the form of a check made out to you, or wired directly into the client’s bank account.

If other arrangements are needed, or the lump sum is to be distributed to multiple places and accounts, a reputable program will be able to accommodate even the most unique circumstances. There is always a solution to be found to a problem when dealing with an experienced buyer of structured annuity settlement organization. The best organizations are those with high ratings from top notch financial rating firm.

The buyer of structured settlement is making a good return from their investment. As such, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions, “shop around”, and insist that any reasonable needs are met.

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1. A new 10% excise tax on indoor tanning services on services provided after June 30, 2010.

2. The new law gives small firms tax credits as incentives to provide coverage, starting this tax year. Employers with 10 or fewer workers and average annual wages of less than $25,000 can receive a credit of up to 35% of their health premium costs each year through 2013. The credit is phased out for firms larger than that and disappears completely if a company has more than 25 employees or average annual wages of $50,000 or more.

Beginning in 2014, the system changes. The law requires each state to establish a health insurance exchange — a marketplace where individuals, the self-employed and small businesses can buy health insurance coverage. The government-regulated exchanges would offer insurance policies with different levels of coverage and price tags. Small firms that sign up with one of the health exchanges to be created can receive a credit of up to 50% of their costs — with the same phaseouts for average income and size as the earlier program. The credit disappears after 2015.

3. A requirement that businesses include the value of the health care benefits they provide to employees on W-2s, beginning with W-2s for 2011. The amount reported is not considered taxable income.

4. Elimination of a deduction employers now take for providing Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage to their retirees to the extent that the federal government subsidizes the coverage. This will not take effect until 2013.

5. Doubling the penalty for nonqualified distributions from health savings accounts, to 20%, beginning in 2011.

6. A limit on the amount that employees can contribute to health care flexible spending accounts to $2,500 a year, but the cap won’t take effect until 2013. This was previously left to the employer’s discretion, with many firms choosing a limit of $4,000 to $5,000 or so

7. A ban on using funds from flexible spending accounts, health reimbursement arrangements or health savings accounts for the cost of over-the-counter medications, starting in 2011.

8. Starting in 2013, a 0.9% Medicare surtax will apply to wages in excess of $200,000 for single taxpayers and over $250,000 for married couples. Also, for the first time ever, a Medicare tax will apply to investment income of high earners. The 3.8% levy will hit the lesser of (1) their unearned income or (2) the amount by which their adjusted gross income exceeds the $200,000 or $250,000 threshold amounts. The new law defines unearned income as interest, dividends, capital gains, annuities, royalties, and rents. Tax-exempt interest won’t be included, nor will income from retirement accounts.

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9. A hike in the 7.5% floor on itemized deductions for medical expenses to 10%, beginning in 2013. But taxpayers age 65 and over are exempt from the cutback through 2016.

10. A new 40% excise tax, beginning in 2018, on high-cost health plans, levied on the portion that exceeds $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. The provision is aimed mostly at gold-plated plans offered by employers, although it can affect individual policies

11. A new tax on individuals who don’t obtain adequate health coverage by 2014 — this is often referred to as the individual mandate.. The tax is to be phased in over three years, starting at the greater of $95, or 1% of income, in 2014, and rising to the greater of $695, or 2.5% of gross income, in 2016.

12. Providing a refundable tax credit, once the individual mandate takes effect in 2014, to help low-income folks purchase coverage. To be eligible, a person’s household income must be between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level, generally around $11,000 to $44,000 for singles and $22,000 to $88,000 for families. The credit is a sliding scale, based on income. Low-incomers get a credit for all costs. Then, as income rises, the credit phases out.

13. A nondeductible fee charged to businesses with 50 or more employees if the firms fail to offer adequate coverage. The fee will equal $2,000 times the number of employees, though it won’t count the first 30 workers in that calculation.

I wonder who is going to benefit from this health care law.

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Speaker(s):

Ben Baldwin, Jr., MSFS, MSM, CLU, ChFC, CFP, AEP

Is Your Cheese on the Move? Fiduciary Issues and Life Insurance Company Product Management – Society of Financial Service Professionals

Financial Service Forum 2008

The FSP Forum is the premier educational meeting for the financial services profession. It focuses on continuing education, with a strong emphasis on advanced, practice-oriented instruction by world class speakers and provides CE credits for the credentials accepted for Society membership. A general session case study features a distinguished panel helping a family sort out a business succession planning problem. Complementing the advanced technical education are eight practice management sessions that provide important information on keeping your practice running smoothly and profitably.

In the old paradigm of the life insurance and annuity business success was determined by asking: How much new premium do you write? What will define success in the new paradigm? Production? Retention? Assets under management? Recurring revenues? Over time, life insurance and annuities become more valuable and need more attention and more service. Over time, most life insurance and annuity compensation declines. This contradiction provides financial rewards for nonfiduciary behaviors. Product innovation and obsolescence have been rapid and frequent, encouraging transactions into new products with front-loaded commissions and liquidity-destroying surrender charges. Is this a fiduciary-friendly structure? Is there an alternative in your future? Ben Baldwin, Jr. and Ben Baldwin III will explore how these and related issues will affect your future.

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