Asset Protection And What It Means To You
Two experts who believe that the life insurance industry's picture is far brighter than it first appears are Paul Hoffman and Anthony M. Santomero of the Wharton School's Financial Institutions Center. Their paper, "Life Insurance Firms in the Retirement Market: Is the News All Bad?" answers their own titular question with a decided "no." Hoffman and Santomero point to a number of facts that, while not completely reassuring to the industry, definitely show some profitable opportunities.
While mutual funds and brokerage houses have been expanding their market share, their inroads have been mostly at the expense of depository institutions, not life insurance companines. The retirement market is a growing financial feast, even if insurers do have to compete a little harder for their share of the bounty. By the end of 1996, total private retirement assets in the U.S. stood at almost $5.1 trillion, having increased as a share of total national wealth from 10.6% in 1983 to 13.6%.
The annuity market represent insurers' best hopes to retain a significant share of the retirement market. In 1993, annuities represented almost 20% of the market, following IRAs' 23.4%. Insurance companies' share of this huge financial stash stood at almost 76% in 1993, equal to more than $1 trillion, of which about $734 billion was earmarked for retirement.
Life insurance carriers, then, are likely to retain significant sales and profit growth in the retirement market. Still, the industry needs to find new ways to grow. Its recent binge of mergers and acquisitions has improved cost efficiency and diminished competition among carriers, but is scarcely enough to offset inroads by brokers and mutual funds. Even banks have declared their intentions to market competitive new instruments in the annuities market.
When a 1966 article in Fortune magazine highlighted an obscure investment that outperformed every mutual fund on the market by double-digit figures over the past year and by high double-digits over the last five years, the hedge fund industry was born. By 1968, there were some 140 hedge funds in operation.
In an effort to maximize returns, many funds turned away from Jones' strategy, which focused on stock picking coupled with hedging, and chose instead to engage in riskier strategies based on long-term leverage. These tactics led to heavy losses in 1969-70, followed by a number of hedge fund closures during the bear market of 1973-74.
Despite troubles in the last few years, the hedge fund industry continues to thrive. The development of the "fund of funds", which is simplistically defined as a mutual fund that invests in multiple hedge funds, provided greater diversification for investors' portfolios and reduced the minimum investment requirement to as low as $25,000. The introduction of the fund of funds not only took some of the risk out of hedge fund investing, but also made the product more accessible to the average investor.
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by: Arthur McCain
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Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010
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