Good news for insurance companies and customers who purchase their retirement-income products. In the first quarter of 2018, purchases of fixed index annuities rose 10% when compared with the same period last year. Not only that, overall fixed annuity sales also saw a significant upward swing.
Fixed index annuity sales were $14.2 billion for the first quarter, according to Wink’s Sales & Market Report, a leading resource in the insurance industry for indexed annuity sales. Not only did sales rise year over year, they were also up 4.4% when compared to the previous quarter, Wink reports. Index annuities have a floor of no less than zero percent and limited excess interest that is based in part by the up-or-down movements of an external index, such as Standard and Poor’s 500®.
Another financial research firm, LIMRA, also observes that fixed annuity sales are on the rise. It projects sales of fixed-rate annuities to reach more than $50 billion by 2019. LIMRA calculates that this is close to 50% greater than the $34 billion in purchases of fixed-rate annuities reached last year.
Still, these strong numbers are short of the record—$60 billion plus. That figure was spurred by retirement savers seeking conservative market protection and guaranteed income strategies in the wake of the Great Recession.
Overall, LIMRA forecasts all annuity sales will grow 5%-10% year-over-year in 2018. And they may even rise up up to 5% in 2019.
