Friday, April 25, 2014

What To Look For In An Annuity Advisor

By Essie Osborn


In layman's words, annuity is described as an investment deal between an investor and an insurance company where the investor enjoys some tax advantages. Adding it to your portfolio of investment can be a very good financial move particularly when you are approaching the retirement age and you do not want to expose your life savings to turbulent fluctuations in market trading. In order to get the best deal however, you need a good annuity advisor to lead you through.

Annuity investment choice is associated with several advantages. It is an investment vehicle that guarantees steady income especially after retirement. It also increases income that comes at retirement; it also gives a way to protect your assets from any claims from creditors and any probate. Other than this, it is the best way to ensure that you pass more to your heirs.

They have several benefits some of which include the fact that they guarantee that you cannot run out of money, increase in future retirement income is guaranteed for every year, protects asset from the creditors and probate and is the safest way to pass more to heirs as inheritance.

The major types of annuities are the variable annuities, equity indexed annuities, fixed annuities and immediate annuities all which are slightly different from each other and as its advantages and disadvantages. With a good advisor, you should get to know which option is better and in which circumstance. It is the duty of the advisor to conduct his planning so that all the requirements put forward by the client are considered. The aim of such financial planning should be to protect and grow the assets of the client and produce a secure retirement income. Actually, not all financial options are appropriate solutions the financial needs for the clients.

Normally, the consultant is expected to advice his or her clients to take the plan that to the best of their interest. This should be the one the client is interested in after being informed of all the necessary details. Basically, a good advisor educates his customers on the investment plans that they are curious about. All these are done why adhering to a strict code of conduct governing the rules of operation.

Some practices that should be avoided by any professional advisor in annuity market include using false information to advertise, avoiding and form of misrepresentation of facts when selling the investment products, the issues of defamation, rebating, using bait and switch to make client by what they had not planned for and twists.

In addition to these, these consultants too should completely avoid talking negatively about their rivals, the rival products and character unless there exists official records of civil or criminal nature committed by those rivals. Basically, they should use their energy to promote their products telling the clients how they stand to benefit.

Many financial consultants would not recommend their clients to buy products from insurance firms that have issue with the going concern. With good ground work however, the client investment may not be at risk at all. They are the best option to mitigate against the longevity risks.

Here are the tips for consultants in this market, it pays to go with bigger insurance firms as they have less solvency risks and is well diversified, pay close attention to ratings by S&P, Fitch or Moodys, and clearly understand the rules of associations and the limits. This should ensure that clients get the best products from them.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment