Adding Annuities to Your Insurance Practice

Why Offer Annuities?
If you are a licensed life insurance agent, you can sell annuities. You can build a practice selling annuities exclusively, or you can sell annuities in addition to what you are currently offering. Annuities are easy to understand and have key benefits over other savings vehicles. Main Street Wealth & Income specializes in providing you with the support you need to understand annuities and have confidence in what you are selling. Give us a call at 801-290-3320.

What are the Key Advantages of Annuities?
Why would anyone want to put their money on deposit with an insurance company? The answer can be easily remembered using the acronym STYLE, which stands for:

• Safety
• Tax advantages
• Yield
• Liquidity
• Estate advantages

Safety: Your money is protected by financially secure insurance companies that hold reserves mandated by law and that are closely regulated by state insurance departments. All the annuities we offer protect and guarantee your principal, subject only to a surrender charge, which is an avoidable charge.

Tax Advantages: As interest is credited to your annuity, it is not considered taxable income until you withdraw it. You get triple compounding: interest on your principal, interest on your interest, and interest on the taxes you do not have to pay until later. To encourage using this savings only for retirement, there is a 10% tax penalty on any withdrawal of interest prior to age 59½.

Yield: Some annuities credit an interest rate set by the company, and the rate is typically higher than the interest rates available on CD's, savings accounts, or money market funds. Some annuities credit an interest rate that is tied to the performance of a stock market index, and these exciting annuities offer excellent upside potential without risk to principal.

Liquidity: In order to provide their safety and yield benefits, all annuities restrict your liquidity via surrender charges. But, during the surrender charge period, annuities allow for periodic penalty-free partial withdrawals, and they often provide for a waiver of the surrender charge for certain hardships. The surrender charge is avoided by taking no withdrawals in excess of the penalty-free partial withdrawal allowance until the surrender charge period is over.

Estate Advantages: At death, annuity proceeds are paid directly to the designated beneficiaries without the delays and expenses associated with probate.

How to Generate Interest in Annuities
Agents who are selling annuities exclusively attract clients through a variety of means, including seminars, mailings, newspaper advertising, and referrals. Agents who primarily sell other products can generate annuity sales from their existing clients by asking them questions, such as:

• "How are you saving (or have you started saving) for retirement?"
• "Do you have any retirement plan money still sitting with a former employer?"
• "Would you like to get a higher interest rate on your IRA?"

Some of our carriers offer excellent selling tools such as video presentations which practically do the selling for you. These can be viewed along with clients or left with clients to view at their leisure.