A 77-year-old retired securities attorney and his wife are taking Nuveen Investments Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Citigroup and others to court over $2 million in losses they claim to have suffered from investing in auction rate securities.
A widow yesterday filed an arbitration claim with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. against Ameriprise Financial Services Inc., alleging that a broker there failed to properly advise her aged husband on a variable annuity purchase and botched a beneficiary designation.
Though rep recruitment is up at the John Hancock Financial Network since the firm decided to embrace the independent adviser channel, recruiters remain skeptical as to whether independents will continue to flock to the company.
Variable annuities, whose sales and asset levels slumped during the market downturn, showed signs of a comeback in the second quarter, according to data from the Insured Retirement Institute.
A federal judge in Chicago last week threw out a $1 billion lawsuit that accused AIG of committing fraud against insurance carriers in a workers' compensation pool.
Total individual-annuity sales tumbled during the second quarter as carriers' new business slowed and fixed-annuity interest rates fell, although sales for all fixed annuities fared better, according to data from LIMRA.
A new life insurance product from The Phoenix Cos. Inc. covers two lives under one policy, providing a death benefit for a spouse or business partner.
The declining value of fixed-income portfolios in a climate of rising interest rates will hinder life insurers' performance over the next two years.
Although members of the insurance industry and some broker-dealer executives are butting heads with state regulators on tougher annuity regulation, financial advisers cheered the proposed use of Finra-esque suitability layers for all annuity sales.
Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, is asking executives at Genworth Financial Inc., The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America and MetLife Inc. to produce details on executives' pay.
