Survey: Tax Advisors Still Selling Variable Annuities

NU Online News Service, Dec. 28, 1:15 p.m. – Tiburon Strategic Advisors, Tiburon, Calif., says independent tax advisors work with many different insurance companies when finding life insurance and annuities for clients.

The financial services consulting firm has analyzed 500 user surveys collected by a tax professional Web site, http://www.taxprobestpractices.com, since July.

The firm found that the most popular insurance companies were units of:

• Lincoln Financial Corp., Fort Wayne, Ind., 49%.
• Zurich Financial Services A.G., Zurich, 31%.
• Sun Life Financial Services of Canada Inc., Toronto, 28%.
• Jefferson-Pilot Corp., Greensboro, N.C., 25%.
• Hartford Financial Services Inc., Hartford, 24%.

Tiburoun also found that, in spite of the recent stock market volatility, 43% of tax advisor insurance sales came from variable annuities.