Retirement planning

Putnam Investments plans to continue to aggressively expand its array of products even as market volatility has forced some competitors to retrench.

Robert L. Reynolds, the company’s president and chief executive officer, said he thinks there are a range of opportunities for Putnam to develop products for Boomers “as they age and the need for lifetime income solutions becomes more evident.”

http://www.aarp.org

The $5 billion earmarked by Congress for early retirees is supposed to be available through 2014.

It is no secret that the financial services world is in the midst of an arms race to service Baby Boomers as they enter the next phase of their investing lives.

A California firm is building portfolios that help boomers generate predictable income.

AARP research finds that even fewer employers have adopted automatic escalation.

Upper quintile earners that are over 65 still derive 40% of their income from work, which means new assets for advisors to tap.

The goal is to strengthen national sales.

As investors get active again, another argument against the modern portfolio theory.

Despite a jump from 2008 lows, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 1500 companies saw little change in their pension plans funded status last year, a new study claims.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—Banks expect hybrid annuities that include long-term-care riders to be the next hot product on brokerage platforms as soon as product providers ramp up their offerings in this area, said Scott Stathis, Kehrer-LIMRA’s chief operating officer and managing director, speaking at the company’s Annuity Product Management Roundtable here.

Growing up in Honduras, Maria Chrin heard the story of how her grandmother, a widow lacking financial savvy, lost a large amount of money because she could not figure out what to do with the stocks her husband owned in U.S. banks.

A new survey challenges the notion that investors should load up on bonds as they age.

If the recession has any pluses at all, it’s that people now seem to be more mindful of how uncertain the market—and their future—really is.

Planning starts to replace panic in some investors’ crash-recovery strategies.

Three in 10 workers entering the work force will become disabled before retiring, according to the Social Security Administration, impacting their ability to earn an income in the near-term and significantly affecting their retirement income.

Despite a significant decline in sales in the past years, advisors and industry executives remain upbeat about annuities because the products are expected to protect principal and provide retirement income.

More than half or workers say they’re not confident about having the means to cover medical expenses in retirement, according to data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Total annuity sales fell almost 7% from the fourth quarter 2009 to the first quarter of this year, from $50.9 billion to $47.4 billion, according to a new report by the Insured Retirement Institute.