These 3 Carriers Are Still Annuity Gorillas
March 6, 2018 by Allison Bell
Annuity considerations revenue at U.S. life and fraternal insurers fell 5.9% in 2017, to $238 billion, according to a new ranking table created by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
The top three players in the market in 2016 — Jackson National, American International Group Inc., and TIAA — held on to their top rankings in 2017. Annuity considerations, or customer payments, at those companies fell less than for the market as a whole.
But year-over-year changes in annuity considerations varied widely from company to company, and from position to position, in the NAIC ranking tables.
The term “annuity considerations” refers to the premiums and other payments customers make for annuities.
The new NAIC table includes considerations for individual annuities, the group annuities used in pension plans, and other types of annuities, not just considerations for individual annuities.
Jackson National was the top-ranked issuer both in 2016 and in 2017. Its annuity considerations fell 1.1% between 2016 and 2017, to $18.6 billion.
Annuity considerations fell 4.9% at AIG, to $15.43 billion, and rose $2 billion at TIAA, to $15.41 billion.
The amount of annuity considerations needed for a fifth-place ranking fell 6.5%, to $12.9 billion.
The amount of annuity considerations needed to rank 13th increased 5.1%, to $6.2 billion.
The NAIC offers separate listings for 25 companies in the annuity considerations tables, and then lumps the considerations for the other issuers into the totals for the market as a whole. A company needed $3 billion in annuity considerations to get its name listed in the 2017 table, up 20% from the total needed to rank 25th in the 2016 table.
The NAIC is a Kansas City, Missouri-based group for insurance regulators. It based the numbers in the new annuity considerations table on data in the insurance company financial filings for 2017 that the NAIC had received by March 2.
When the NAIC created the 2017 table, it had filings for 93.2% of the life insurers and 98.6% of the fraternal insurers. The NAIC says it will update the 2017 table several times this month as more filings come in.
A link to the 2017 table, which is copyrighted, is available here.
