A year or so ago, an article written by stockbroker, Brooks Rhys, made a clear and loud statement, “Don’t Buy Equity Linked Annuities!” I have to laugh at the headline now; Mr. Rhys didn’t even know the correct name of our fabulous product.
Mr. Rhys, there is no such thing as equity linked annuities, their correct name is fixed indexed annuities (FIA).
Idiot.
In the article Mr. Rhys was judge, jury and executioner, plus he is an expert, well a self-described expert. In re-reading the article now a year later, it is almost hilarious to revisit his innuendos.
- If you want to invest your money in the stock market, buy stocks. That is a very true statement, if you want stocks, buy stocks. How Mr. Rhys could have placed a FIA in the same category as a stock purchase is of course, ridiculous. Statements such as this shows how ignorant so many people are (or confused) about FIA
- The SEC should oversee the equity linked annuity industry. Mr. Rhys sells securities and is heavily regulated by the SEC and FINRA, what he fails to understand is we are already regulated with a system that is 150 years old and a system that works. Why would he want more and more regulations? Simple, the harder it is for prospects to buy a FIA means he might have more chances to peddle securities.
- Mr. Rhys: “Buying an Equity Linked Annuity will provide terrible returns!” What makes Mr. Rhys thinks our prospects are even invested in anything except completely market risk free assets? He knows a FIA is not invested in the market, but fear is a great media to get people to stock actions. The scarier he can make it sound, the better chance he could sell you something.
There is a marketing term for this, it is called “negative marketing” and Mr. Rhys appears to be well-schooled in the art. You can read more about how the negative marketing works at this link: http://negativemarketing.com/ Another simple way to understand negative marketing is to watch our presidential election process, all negative.
Let’s jump forward to today, how good was Mr. Rhys at seeing into the future, would folks actually not buy a FIA based on his opinion? Actually the opposite has happened; the FIA is hotter than ever. In fact, the FIA are outselling the long term annuity leader which is sold by stockbrokers (Mr. Rhys), variable annuities. Why did this happen, how could a product so despised by so many security salespeople suddenly become the super star of retirement planning? Simple, our products provide 3 important features.
- Safety and Guarantees
- Income
- No market risk
Cheer up Mr. Rhys; our products are so in demand they are now the darling of the security sales companies, of which you are a proud member. Possibly time will dampen folks memories and some of those you tried to scare away will come back and buy our fabulous product from you.
BTW: a current LIMRA report Based on the 2nd quarter of 2015 showed variable annuities fell 4% while FIA rose 16%. Should I send Mr. Rhys a copy of the report?
