Increases in Requests for Guaranteed Products

I was a presenter at a session titled Innovations in Life Product Development at last week’s AICP conference in Dallas.

One of the things I mentioned in my presentation was that there is an increase in development of guaranteed products, driven by marketplace demand for the safety provided by those products.

In the October 2010 issue of Best’s Review, there are some numbers to support my impression based on my own company’s workload and product development conversations I am having with clients and potential clients. Best’s passed along data from MetLife’s Lessons Learned adviser poll and reported that there were significant increases in requests for guaranteed products in all types of financial advisers. Those increases in requests for guaranteed products were greatest among insurance agents, where requests were up 73%, then among wirehouse advisers, up 71% followed by independent wealth managers where requests were up 45%. Interesting to note in this poll that independent wealth managers secured the most new clients (62%) and Insurance agents the fewest (43%).