The Standard Adds MYGA Contract: Annuity Moves

StanCorp Financial Group Inc. has kicked off 2021 by unveiling the "first of several new annuity products launching this year."

The first contract to reach the market is the Multi-Choice Annuity MCA contract, a single-premium deferred annuity contract.

The product is a multi-year guaranteed annuity (MYGA) contract.

A purchaser can also choose to have the contract rate guarantee last for three years, five years or seven years.

The Standard is offering four different provisions purchasers can use to get cash out of the contract. A purchaser can choose no optional withdrawals provisions, an interest-only withdrawal provision, a 10% annual withdrawals provision, or 10% annual withdrawals with guarantee of principal.

The Standard is a Portland, Oregon-based arm of Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co. of Tokyo.

In other annuity news:

New York Life Insurance Co. has introduced the IndexFlex variable annuity contract.

The contract offers purchases both index-linked and about a dozen variable investment options.

The index-linked options come with access to guarantees for the duration of the surrender charge period, according to New York Life.

New York Life says it will sell the contract through banks and broker-dealers as well as through its own agents.

Protective Life Corp., of Birmingham, Alabama, is selling two new variable annuities through Charles Schwab. The annuities are the Schwab Genesis Variable Annuity and the Schwab Genesis Advisory Variable Annuity.

Schwab is selling the Schwab Genesis Variable Annuity directly to its own clients and offering the Schwab Genesis Advisory Variable Annuity through registered investment advisors.

The contracts offer purchasers access to investment options from 12 fund companies. One of the options is an S&P 500 Index Portfolio option. The index portfolio has total annual operating expenses of 0.03%, according to Schwab.

The contracts have no surrender charges.

Purchasers can pay extra for death benefit protection.

Purchasers can also pay extra for a SecurePay Life guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit rider.

Group Annuity Moves

MetLife Inc., of New York, says its Metropolitan Tower Life Insurance Co. unit has agreed to reinsure about $2 billion in pension liabilities for Legal & General Assurance Society Ltd. of London.

Legal & General has agreed to provide an annuity Evonik Industries AG is using to lift $93 million in pension liabilities out of a U.S. pension plan. The transaction affects the pension benefits of 1,700 retirees. Legal & General America made the U.S. transaction through its Legal & General Retirement America unit.

Milliman, of Seattle, says, the corporate pension funded ratio, which affects the attractiveness of pension risk transfer deals, fell to 88.2% at the end of 2020, from 89.8% a year earlier.

If the interest rates used in the calculations increased to 3.06% by the end of 2021 and to 3.66% by the end of 2022, the funded ratio would be 123% by the end of 2022, according to Milliman.

If the interest rates used fell to 1.26% by the end of 2022, the funded ratio could fall to 75%, Milliman estimates.

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