The Best Annuities (Barrons)

Barron's Cover | SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 2011
Best Annuities
By KAREN HUBE

Special Report -- Retirement: With their steady income payments, annuities are suddenly hot.

Shortly after George Altmeyer of Bucks County, Pa., retired from his senior-management job at a large industrial company, half his stock portfolio vanished. It was wiped out by the stock-market crash of 2008. But Altmeyer, 67, never lost a night's sleep, and he doesn't worry about whether he will run out of retirement income. His secret? He bought two kinds of annuities in 2007. "They give this blanket of security—it doesn't matter what the stock market does, really," he says.

Annuities, maligned for years as expensive gimmicks, are now shining in a big way. The basic features that critics used to blast as too costly—downside protection and guaranteed payouts—have paid off spectacularly for folks like Altmeyer through the stock-market collapse and the subsequent volatility.

Now, as baby boomers approach retirement with fresh memories of big market losses, many sharp financial advisors are recommending an annuity as an important part of an income plan. "We've come from thinking that stocks and bonds were the answer to everything, to worrying about how to arrange for monthly income to age 80 and beyond," says Fred Reish, a lawyer who specializes in retirement issues at Drinker Biddle & Reath in Los Angeles. "Annuities can take away that worry."


Little wonder that annuities are getting a fresh look. Though the effective returns are hardly eye-popping—often just a shade above those of certificates of deposit—annuities offer some real comfort to retirees.

With that in mind, Barron's has identified what we think are the 25 best annuities. As you can see in the table nearby, we've picked five annuities from each of five categories. We sized up the field mostly by returns, costs and strength of the insurance companies behind the products. As of last week, each of the annuities on our list was doing well by all three measures.

IN ITS MOST basic form, an annuity is a contract with an insurance company that converts your lump sum into a stream of guaranteed income, for either a set period or for your lifetime. Its primary purpose is to hedge against longevity risk—the risk that you outlive your income. While annuities date back centuries, longevity risk is a growing modern concern. Consider: In 1930, retirement lasted three to seven years, with people dying at an average age of 60. As life expectancies grew longer over subsequent years, most workers could depend on a company pension to carry them through retirement.

Now, retirements last a quarter century or more, and pensions are a dying breed, so investors are left to their own devices to arrange for income to supplement Social Security payments. At age 65, the average life expectancy is 85 for a man and 88 for a woman. But what haunts folks planning for retirement are the odds of living much longer. There's a 25% chance of living past 90, and for a couple, there's a 25% chance that one spouse will live to age 95.

While that is a risk annuities can address, they traditionally have introduced other problems in the process. The biggest: Once you hand over a lump sum, you could never get the money back, and if you died prematurely, the insurance company, rather than your heirs, got what was left of your money.

But over the past decade, insurers have become much more flexible, offering long menus of riders and options to give investors liquidity, exit opportunities and certainty that their heirs are first in line for the assets, not the insurer.

The number of different annuities has mushroomed: There are now 1,600 iterations of the product. These include both variable annuities, whose growth fluctuates based on underlying stock and bond investments, and fixed annuities, which are pegged to an interest rate, similar to a certificate of deposit or a bond. The payouts can be either immediate—starting right now—or deferred, starting at a specified later date.

The most popular of all is the deferred variable annuity, the last of the five categories shown on our list. It accounted for 63% of the annuity industry's $221 billion in sales last year, with investors choosing from a range of underlying stock- and bond-fund investment options. Money in these products grows tax-deferred, an advantage over a mutual fund. On the date you specify, the value is "annuitized," or turned into steady payouts. The better the underlying investments have done, the higher the payouts. The payouts are taxed as ordinary income.

In a plain-vanilla deferred variable annuity, negative returns are possible, but the industry has created various options to put investors at ease, such as riders that guarantee certain levels of income upon retirement. "Eighty percent of the time people buy an income rider," says Robert E. Sollmann, executive vice president of retirement products at MetLife.

Also popular are guaranteed minimum death benefits. Almost all deferred variable annuities sold include the basic kind: a guarantee that, if the account value has lost value when the investor dies, heirs will get the full amount initially invested. Death benefits can get a lot fancier, such as guarantees that heirs get the highest value the account hit on one of its anniversaries. Between 2001 and 2003, variable annuity beneficiaries received $2.8 billion more than the account value when policy holders died earlier than expected, according to the Insured Retirement Institute.


Despite the popularity of deferred variable annuities, they aren't necessarily the best choice, financial advisors caution. Many are sold aggressively by sales agents to folks who only vaguely understand the costs and features. In fact, the fee structure can encourage unscrupulous practices.

Average fees on variable annuities are 2.33%, compared with mutual funds' 1.32%, but they can top 4%, including death-benefit fees, administrative fees and underlying mutual fund expenses.

Michael Zhuang, an advisor at MZ Capital in Washington, D.C., said an investor recently asked him to look over his variable annuity contract. "The investor thought he was paying 2% in expenses, but it was double that, " Zhuang says. "His contract was about 100 pages. Various expenses were on different pages."

However, it's entirely possible to find a lower-cost variable annuity, such as those offered by Vanguard, Fidelity, Charles Schwab or Pacific Life Insurance Co., among others, advisors say. And for investors who have maxed out contributions to a 401(k), IRA or other tax-favored savings plans, a variable deferred annuity could make sense, some advisors say.

THE PUREST OF ALL annuity products—favored most widely by advisors—is an immediate annuity. You give the insurance company a chunk of money, and it converts it right away into fixed regular payments for life or a specified period.

Some economists say they are baffled by the low level of participation in these products, given their benefits. Aside from guaranteed income, lifetime annuities actually give retirees higher regular payments than they would get if they self-managed their income stream. "Annuities provide what we economists call a mortality premium, which is basically an extra rate of return over and above what one can get from a non-annuitized asset," says Jeffrey R. Brown, a finance professor at the University of Illinois and associate director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Center for Retirement Research.

With a basic lifetime immediate annuity, you give up assets to the insurance company if you die early. "If you live long, you win but if you don't, you lose. But you're dead," says Jean Fullerton, an advisor at WJM Financial in Bedford, N.H. But many insurers, such as New York Life and Aviva, offer guarantees that they will continue to pay the annuity for five to 25 years. If you die within this period, the payments go to your heirs.

Special features always cost extra, and with immediate annuities, the costs take the form of lower monthly payouts. For example, a 65-year-old man who puts $100,000 into an immediate annuity with lifetime payment at Pacific Life Insurance Co. would get a monthly lifetime payout of $602, according to Cannex, which tracks annuity data. If he opted for a 10-year guarantee, meaning the insurer continues to pay heirs for 10 years even if he dies before that, the monthly payment would be $590.

Rosemary Caligiuri, a financial advisor at Harvest Group Financial Services, says she likes to use immediate annuities in combination with fixed deferred annuities for her clients in retirement. In a fixed deferred annuity, assets are paid out later and grow based on underlying interest rates. The rates can be reset based on insurers' underlying investments. Or, investors can choose a fixed rate for a certain period.

You might also consider index-linked annuities, says Caligiuri, who ladders annuities to secure income in phases and diversify across insurers. These cushion the downside—you'll never have a return below zero, even in a year like 2008. On the upside, returns on these are pegged to an index, but are usually capped.

Jack Marrion, president of Advantage Compendium, which tracks indexed annuities, says over many historical periods they have proven to be better choices than either CDs or the stock market. Over the past five years through September 2010, 36 annuities offered by 19 insurers had an average annual return of 3.9%, compared with a one-year CD's 2.8%, a five-year CD's 3.8% and the S&P 500 index's return of 0.65%, according to a study by Marrion.

Periodically, usually each year, an insurer can reset its caps or other terms. "If a company won't give you its renewal history, don't do business with them," he says. Also consider the financial-strength ratings by A.M. Best, Standard & Poor's and other agencies.

If you choose wisely, you'll end up with a nice income flow, relatively low fees and minimal risk of problems with the provider. That's saying a lot in these uncertain times.

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