Author Topic: Athene Performance Elite* Plus 15 Annuity - Help me Critique  (Read 2507 times)

sdt1890

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My parents' advisor/ salesmen has them signed up for this and they think it is such a great thing. They were mentioning the "bonuses" they received for signing up and how it had returns of 10% over the last 12 months and about the "guaranteed returns of 4.5% worst case". I admittedly, cannot completely understand all the details of the "product", but know annuities are only good for the person selling them... They said the plan is set up where if one dies, it goes to the other, and if they both die, it passes on to the children.

Turns out, the "advisor" had them convert a lot of their retirement accounts and has them in annuities...

Below is a link to their article. Can anyone explain, in very simplistic terms, why or why not this is not a good "investment"? The audience is very limited in the finance world.

https://www.atheneannuity.com/portal/site/agent/login/annuity.solutions/independent.insurance.agents/iia.performance.elite/!ut/p/a1/hc_BCoJAEAbgZ-ngMXdazbZua5ZppCRRupfQsFVQV9SS3j4LL0HZ3P7h-2EGMeQjVoT3lIdNKoowe2WmnTUgljlXsW2uVAOo53h442DFXGodCDoAP4bCv_4JsUGiK8OAWJMezNwttjDBtutSDai-O-zBWGNynPZg4EgbMZ6J6P1wQItIIRyxKr7GVVzJt6pbJ01T1gsJJGjbVuZC8CyWLyKX4FslEXWD_E-JytyH1Bqz6NGOnixRu0Q!/dl5/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/

Rob_bob

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Re: Athene Performance Elite* Plus 15 Annuity - Help me Critique
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2018, 08:16:15 PM »
Annuities may or may not be a good thing depending on how risk adverse a person is.  There are so many types of annuities and so many details hidden in the prospectus that you can't depend on what the salesman tells you to be what you actually get.

It had returns of 10% over the last 12 months but the S&P 500 is up about 14% in the last 12 months and it is probably capped so it may never earn more than 10%.  The guaranteed returns of 4.5% worst case my not be applied to the invested principle but instead it could be the annualized payment a person will receive if they take it as monthly income.  It's also possible that 4.5% is before fees are taken out so it might be more like 1.5%

Annuities are not an investment, they are insurance.  The insurance company isn't trying to do great things for the policy holder, they are trying to make money for the company.  There is usually a penalty for taking your money out for maybe up to 10 years, much if not all that amount is the commission payed to the sales person.  They can say you will never lose money but I have heard of cases where people do lose money and it's spelled out deep in the small print in the contract.

Now how much of this applies to the annuity you are asking about, well who knows? The devil is in the details and you need a fiduciary financial planner with lots of experience with annuities to interpret the contract details.

MDM

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Re: Athene Performance Elite* Plus 15 Annuity - Help me Critique
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2018, 09:18:51 PM »
Might be worth going through
Looking for a source to analyze Fixed Index/Equity Indexed Annuities and
Investor Analysis of Index Annuities
to see if something there (or in links therein) is helpful to you.