Products June 11, 2012

Phoenix Companies Rolls Out Annuity and Planning Tool

The Phoenix Companies Inc. introduced a single premium fixed-index annuity for people approaching or already in retirement.

 
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The Personal Protection Choice Annuity has six indexed accounts, a fixed account and principal protection from investment loss. Annuity holders can create a customized solution for an additional fee by combining up to three different benefits: lifetime income, chronic care and an enhanced death benefit. The annuity can combine the Income Protection benefit with Care Protection or the Family Protection benefits, or both.

Income Protection provides a guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit. For clients looking to begin their guaranteed income stream within the first several contract years, the Income Protection: Today benefit offers a bonus of up to 45% of the initial contract value. The Income Protection: Tomorrow benefit offers an annual 14% simple interest roll-up to the income benefit base available for the first 10 years of the contract or until the rider is exercised (if earlier than 10 years).

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Care Protection provides an enhanced withdrawal benefit of 125% to 250% of the guaranteed lifetime withdrawal amount, based on age and qualification level.

 

The Family Protection benefit offers a death benefit of a simple interest roll-up of 5 or 10 percent (depending on attained age) for the first 10 years of the contract, or until the rider exercise date or age 85, whichever comes first. All withdrawals, including the guaranteed withdrawals, reduce the contract value and the death benefit.

Issued by PHL Variable Insurance Company, a Phoenix insurance subsidiary, the annuity is available through independent distributors working with Saybrus Partners, the company’s distribution subsidiary.

In conjunction with the annuity, Phoenix launched REALIZE, a tablet-compatible retirement planning tool that generates annuity proposals. Personalized outputs of clients’ key retirement considerations can also be produced.

For more information on REALIZE or the annuity, visit www.phoenixwm.com.

 

Data & Research June 11, 2012

Employers Adjusting for Additional Costs from Health Care Act

Nearly half of all employers (47.2%) have conducted an analysis to determine how health care reform legislation will impact their health care plan costs.
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A majority of organizations (69.6%) expect the legislation will raise their costs this year, according to the Health Care Reform: 2012 Employer Actions Update survey from the International Foundation for Employee Benefit Plans. One-quarter (25.6%) estimate the legislation will increase their costs by 1% to 2%, followed by one-fifth (19.8%) estimating cost increases of 3% to 4%. Employers that have not conducted an analysis of plan costs are slightly more likely to estimate cost increases.  

Of provisions currently in place, extending coverage to adult children until age 26 was listed as the top cost driver (38.7%). The nondeductible excise tax on high-cost health plans in 2018 (19.6%) was cited as the top forthcoming cost driver.  

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Approximately 14% of responding employers are anticipating making a change in their funding approach with their primary medical plan due to changes imposed by health care reform. Most organizations anticipating funding changes are adding stop-loss insurance.  

Increasing participants’ share of premium costs, done by more than one in five respondents (23.1%), is the most common technique used to address cost increases caused by health care reform. In the next two years, 20.1% of employers plan to increase employees’ proportion of dependent coverage cost to address cost increases.

 

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As a result of health care reform, nearly one-third of surveyed organizations (33.4%) have conducted dependent eligibility audits or plan to do so in the next two years, and another 29.5% have analyzed or plan to analyze claims. One-third of respondents (33.2%) are considering offering the increased wellness incentives allowed in 2014 provisions.  

Approximately 14% of responding organizations have already started to redesign their primary health plan to avoid triggering the 2018 excise tax.  

Nearly half of employers (47.2%) describe their current focus with regard to health care reform as implementing changes to make their plans compliant with legislation. Nearly two in five are focused on beginning to develop tactics to deal with the implications of reform (39.1%) or developing a multiyear approach (37.3%). Slightly fewer than one-third describe their focus as “wait and see.”  

Among organizations in a “wait and see” phase, four in five (80.7%) are awaiting the Supreme Court decision, 62.4% are awaiting further regulatory guidance and 52.1% are awaiting the outcome of the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.  

The complete report is here.   

 

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