Lincoln Financial Group introduced new fee-based variable and fixed indexed annuities to its suite of lifetime income solutions.
Designed to help advisors solve for their clients' retirement income needs, these products provide savers with a known source of income through a competitive cost option with a broad selection of investment choices, and no surrender charges.
The new solutions are now available within Lincoln's variable annuity portfolio and include American Legacy Advisory, Lincoln ChoicePlus Advisory and Lincoln Investor Advantage Advisory.
Lincoln also added fee-based versions of Lincoln Covered Choice 5 and 7 to its fixed indexed annuity portfolio. Covered Choice Advisory is the new fixed-indexed product, available in a five-year option and a seven-year option. This product is not available in the RIA channel, and was designed for Lincoln's other channels, including independent, bank and wire/regional.
According to John Kennedy, senior vice president and head of Retirement Solutions Distribution for Lincoln Financial Distributors, these solutions provide advisors with more fee-based options.
"Until now, there have been limited choices for fee-based guaranteed income products. Our expanded portfolio is built to match the way advisors do business and how they construct portfolios for their clients," Kennedy said in a statement.
American International Group, Inc. (AIG) also recently introduced a variable annuity option for fee-only advisors.
The Polaris Advisory Income Variable Annuity – issued by AIG member insurance company American General Life Insurance Company – offers two income protection features which allow investors to capture potential investment gains either daily or annually to their income base.
Because the Polaris Advisory Income Variable Annuity has been designed exclusively for advisory platforms, it features lower cost investment options without 12b-1 fees.
At this time, Polaris Advisory Income Variable Annuity is available in all states except Hawaii, Missouri and New York.
First Trust Launches Fixed Income ETF
First Trust Advisors L.P. launched a new actively managed exchange traded fund that is designed to give investors exposure primarily to investment grade bonds.
The First Trust TCW Opportunistic Fixed Income ETF (FIXD) seeks to maximize long-term total return using a value driven approach. The fund is a multisector portfolio that provides exposure to core and satellite fixed income assets.
Under normal market conditions, the fund will seek to achieve its investment objective by investing at least 80% of its net assets (including investment borrowings) in fixed income securities of any credit quality and may invest up to 35% of its net assets in securities rated below investment grade.
The fund is sub-advised and managed by TCW Investment Management Company LLC.
Tortoise Launches Water ETF
Tortoise Index Solutions launched the Tortoise Water Fund (TBLU), which is an ETF designed to track the total return of the Tortoise Water Index.
