Higher interest rates and client concerns about stock market volatility pushed sales of multi-year guaranteed annuities (or MYGA contracts) up hard in the second quarter.
U.S. MYGA contract sales increased 82% between the second quarter of 2021 and the latest quarter, to $26 billion, according to new annuity issuer sales survey data from Wink.
Sheryl Moore, the CEO of Wink, said second-quarter MYGA sales "exploded."
"Given the recent rate environment, I project that we can count on next quarter's MYGA sales being significant as well," she said.
Sales of all of the types of individual, deferred, U.S. annuities Wink tracks increased 13% year-over-year, to $73 billion. Non-variable annuity sales increased 47%, to $46 billion.
Variable annuity sales fell 31%, to $26 billion, but sales of index-linked variable annuities — also known as structured annuities or registered index-linked annuity (RILA) contracts — increased.
What It Means
Clients want protection against the full force of a bear market, but they're still hungry for asset growth.
Details
Wink based the second-quarter annuity sales figures on data from 17 index-linked variable annuity issuers, 43 variable annuity issuers, 42 traditional fixed annuity issuers and 69 multi-year guaranteed-annuities (MYGA) issuers.
