Putting the 'New' in Annuities
December 8, 2011 by Ron Panko
| Panko, Ron |
Variable annuity writers have taken a new step in risk
management by introducing investment options with hedge assets.
The financial crisis was a horrible experience for people as they watched their
asset values fall sharply. But it was also an amazing laboratory for risk
management by writers of retirement savings products, said Ken Mungan,
financial risk management practice leader at Milliman.
“It was exciting for me to see the life insurance industry use that
opportunity to see how retirement savings products could be created with a
strong use of risk-management principles and then be proactive in designing new
products and new manufacturing processes for those products to give a more
sustainable offering to the market,” Mungan said.
Milliman’s new contribution is the creation this year of three “protected
portfolio” funds that are made up of both exchange-traded funds and hedge
assets.
Variable annuity writers have added to their risks since 2002 by offering
guaranteed withdrawal benefits. These benefits have grown into lifetime
withdrawal benefits, which have been driving VA sales. But when the financial
crisis struck in 2008 and account values fell steeply, many insurers found
themselves struggling to hedge those liabilities on their balance sheets. In
response, many reduced the benefits they offered in new contracts, and writers
have worked with firms like Milliman to try to contain risks.
The three new funds, a joint venture of Milliman and ValMark Advisers, are the
latest development in what Mungan calls a multiyear effort to create a
“sustainable manufacturing model.” They embed hedging at the
subaccount level rather than at the policy level, which should reduce
volatility in account values.
“The company still provides a guarantee, but now it’s a much less
stressful offering on the balance sheet of the company, and it provides more
stable quarterly earnings,” he said. The new funds have also generated
positive responses from customers and financial advisers, who value risk
management in the fund options they own, Mungan said.
ValMark’s investment advisory business manages exchange-traded fund portfolios
on behalf of life insurance and investment companies, high-net-worth clients
and collective trusts. It created ETF allocation portfolios in 2002 before
launching five traditional ETF allocations for the variable insurance world and
then partnering with Milliman to create the three so-called “protected
portfolios.”Michael McClary, chief investment officer at ValMark, said
Milliman thought ETFs were the perfect tool for its risk-management technique
because they are index-based, and Milliman uses index-based futures contracts
as its hedging tool.
“With our portfolios, since every component of our portfolio is an index,
there is very little hedge breakage,” he said. “They perform very
close to what we expect. So that’s where the marriage got started. Milliman
thought we were the perfect partners.”
ValMark also worked closely with i-Shares, the largest ETF provider in the
world, to help design the operational component of the funds, McClary said.
McClary is manager of the funds.
“We handle the ETF side, and they do what they need to do on the hedging
side,” he said. “So if there is a large deposit, we’ll be purchasing
ETFs, and they will be shorting index-based futures contracts based on their
methodologies and algorithms.”
Milliman looks at all of the volatility of each of the individual ETFs on a
custom basis every day, and the volatility measures are up or down based on the
volatility of the portfolio, said McClary. “So as the market gets more
volatile, our net long exposure will decrease,” he said. “As
volatility goes down, our net long exposure will increase.”
In simple terms, McClary said, ValMark’s traditional strategic allocation
models are designed to drive on the expressway at a steady 65 miles per hour,
and Mungan and Milliman dynamically apply the brakes and change lanes with their
hedging techniques.
In the third quarter, the S&P 500 Index was down 13. 87%, but the three
protected portfolios were down less, McClary said.
The growth fund was down 6.49%, moderate growth was down 5.62%, and the
balanced portfolio was down 4.45%.
Early Adopter: Ohio National
In late June, Ohio National
Life Insurance Co. became the first variable annuity writer to add these
portfolios to their lineup.
They are available to both inforce and new business, said Stephen Murphy,
senior vice president, capital management. The company plans to introduce a
product and new features early next year that will be specifically designed
around the funds and will provide a richer lifetime withdrawal benefit.
The new funds were compelling to Ohio National because they benefit the insurer
and are attractive to the consumer, Murphy said. And when Mungan spoke in June
to the company’s wholesalers, Murphy said the “buzz that Ken’s
presentation generated was incredible.”
In the first two months, about $50 million was invested
voluntarily in the funds, even though no one is required to put money into them
as this time, he said. That could represent a significant percentage of new VA
premium flow, Murphy said, “and it was reassuring to us that we made the
right move.”
Overall, using the funds will reduce the amount of hedging Ohio National will
need to do, “and its downside protection is also going to reduce the
reserve calls and capital calls that these riders can potentially have,”
Murphy said.
Other companies have used a variety of ways to reduce account value volatility,
he said, but those efforts have been at the policy level. “Those methods
create the risk for policyholders that they can become stranded in nonequities
because they move your account value out of equities into fixed income,”
Murphy said. “The question is, can you protect against a downturn and
still provide a lot of upside potential? All of our analyses have showed us so
far that Ken has come up with a structure that provides a lot of downside
protection but still allows you to participate in much of the upside.”
Advisers Show Interest
Indeed, a couple of other companies say they have included protectedportfolio
funds not so much for their own risk-management purposes, but rather to help
policyholders manage account-value risk. Jefferson National
Life Insurance Co. is in the process of adding the funds to its Monument
Advisor variable annuity, and Prudential
Financial has added them to its variable universal life insurance
policies.
Monument Advisor is designed to be a tax-deferred electronic trading platform
for fee-based advisers to proactively create and manage portfolios for clients.
The platform allows advisers to easily rebalance and transfer assets, said Laurence
Greenberg, company president.
The only guarantee the company offers is an optional return-of-premium death
benefit.
“The advisers want to utilize their own strategies rather than pay the
insurance company to manage portfolio risk through a rider,” he said.
“They believe they can do that more cost-effectively than employing
riders.”
The annuity offers that opportunity through 330 fund options, compared to an
industry average of about 40, according to Greenberg. It charges a flat fee of $20
a month regardless of policy size, which Greenberg said averages about $200,000.
So before adding the funds, Jefferson National already offered a wide variety
of asset classes, including funds that short stock indexes.
“It’s a very different take on the role a variable annuity can play with a
fee-based adviser in terms of managing their clients’ money,” he said.
Despite the in-fund hedging, the new funds are not more expensive than existing
funds in the annuity, Greenberg said.
“To us, it was an opportunity to help advisers offer that strategy,”
he said. Jefferson National added one of the portfolio-protected funds in May
and planned to launch the other two in November.
Greenberg said requests to add the funds came from advisers.
“We don’t use wholesalers. We have a centralized desk where our people
talk to advisers every day and get constant feedback. All we do is serve
fee-based advisers, so it is essential that we understand what they need to be
successful.”
Jefferson National launched Monument Advisor in 2006 and expects to have $850
million to $900 million of assets under management by year-end,
Greenberg said.
The insurer works with more than 1,500 advisers and has about 5,000
policyholders.
Addition to VUL
Prudential added portfolio-protected funds at the end of August to its PruLife
Custom Premiere II and its VUL Protector.
“Our product area looked into them and thought they added
diversification,” said Barbara Cooper, chief risk officer
for Prudential’s individual life insurance business. “We offered them to
customers because we felt that a subset would like the management style and the
approach it takes to investing.”
Cooper said Prudential did not add the funds as a way to manage the death
benefit liability. The VUL Protector has a no-lapse guarantee, but the issuing
companies, Pruco Life and Pruco Life of New
Jersey, cover that risk through reinsurance, Cooper said.
According to Mungan, the three protected portfolio funds could be especially
useful for investors who are in or nearing retirement and dependent on taking
withdrawals from their holdings. If a significant market decline occurs while
making periodic withdrawals, account values can fall so rapidly that the
investors may not have enough left to participate meaningfully in rebounding
prices.
“Those two events can combine in a very toxic way to deplete the account
value for the customer,” he said. “So having a protection strategy
within a customer’s portfolio means that the sequence-of-returns problem is
largely solved, and it gives them the ability. . .to benefit reasonably from
recovery in the market.”
Mungan estimated that some version of the sustainable manufacturing model
probably represents about half of current variable annuity sales, “and
it’s growing at such a rapid rate that I believe it will become the primary
manufacturing process in the VA industry in the relatively near term.”
Murphy said risk management challenges for annuity writers can be explained by
the way airlines hedge the costs of fuel.
“The reason an airline won’t sell you a ticket for five years from now is
that it can’t hedge fuel costs five years from now,” he said.
“If we’re going to sell somebody options, which are what we’re selling in
our riders, and we have no ability to lock in that cost to hedge these things,
that’s not a sustainable design. So what these risk-levered funds do is allow
us to put a policy on the books and predict what it will cost us to hedge that
policy,” Murphy said.
EARLY ADOPTER: Barbara Cooper, chief risk officer for Prudential
Financial’s individual life insurance business, said the company in
August protected portfolio funds to its variable universal life products to
help policyholders diversify.Key Points* The Trend: Variable annuity writers are showing interest in new investment
options that actively hedge assets at the subaccount level.
* The Significance: These protected portfolios’ reduce the risk of large
account-value declines while still providing upside potential.
* The Payoff: Insurers will have better control over their balance sheets and
more satisfied customers.
“What these risk-levered funds do is allow us to put a policy on the books
and predict what it will cost us to hedge that policy.”
– Stepben Murphy, Ohio
National Life Insurance Co.
Audio:
Listen to the entire interview with Ken Mungan at www.ambest.com/audio.
Learn More
Ohio National Life Insurance
Co.
A.M. Best Company # 6852
Distribution: Career agents, securities brokerage firms, banks and
broker/dealers
Jefferson National Life
Insurance Co.
A.M. Best Company # 6475
Distribution: Fee-based and fee-only financial advisers
Pruco Life Insurance Co.
A.M. Best Company # 8240
Distribution: Career agents, wirehouses, banks, independent financial planners
For ratings and other financial strength information visit www.ambest.com.
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Copyright: |
(c) 2011 A.M. Best Company |
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Source: |
Proquest LLC |
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Wordcount: |
1920 |
