The market keeps going up, and down, a lot.
Nationwide and RetireOne have announced life and annuity product extension features that could appeal to retirement savers who are nervous about that.
What It Means
Sometimes, companies add product flexibility to appeal to consumers' optimism.
This week, menu expansion may be about giving retirement savers more ways to defend themselves against investment market volatility.
Nationwide
Nationwide is adding to the index menu for the Nationwide Indexed Universal Life Accumulator II 2020 life insurance policy.
The Nationwide IUL Accumulator II 2020 policy is really a product that consumers can use to generate retirement income as easily as to create a death benefit.
The new indexes on the index menu are the J.P. Morgan Mercury Index and the BNP Paribas Global H-Factor Index.
The J.P. Morgan Mercury Index is an index that "measures market conditions and the current stage of the business cycle, diversified fixed income, and volatility-based commodities," according to Nationwide.
The BNP Paribas index "helps keep volatility low and provides more stable and consistent returns through a methodology that identifies and removes overpriced stocks," the company says.
Nationwide reports that the managers of both index programs will try to limit the effects of market volatility by choosing investments based on the business cycle, and by trying to remove the potential for human bias.
RetireOne and Midland National
RetireOne and Midland National have made the Constance plug-in annuitization module available with more mutual funds, ETFs and model investment portfolios.
