The Value of Annuities in Retirement Planning: Jim Wagner

Jim Wagner wants to stick to the annuity basics: helping more real people get more real retirement income protection.

Wagner has been the chief distribution officer for the retirement division at Protective, a Birmingham, Alabama-based life insurance and annuity issuer, since 2020.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Ohio Wesleyan University, he started out in sales management at ING. He joined Protective, as head of internal sales, in 2011.

At Protective, he helps manage sales for an annuity business that has about $27 billion in general account and separate account liabilities on the books and reported $750 million in fixed and variable product sales for the first of the year.

He answered questions via email about the headwinds and tailwinds in the annuity market, and how he sees the market’s future.

The answers to the questions in this interview have been edited.

THINKADVISOR: What were you doing last year, and how did that go? 

JAMES WAGNER: We continued our focus on strengthening our ability to provide financial professionals with strategies and solutions to protect their clients’ retirement income. Because of the many retirement planning options available, it’s important to be open, proactively learn, decipher trends and solve problems to offer solutions for customers’ specific needs.

Last year, we started to build new programs that could deliver these solutions. We wanted to educate people on the best ways to protect the three types of retirement income: essential, legacy and lifestyle.

As the pandemic slowed, we were able to offer educational meetings to financial professionals whether in person, one-on-one, with small groups, virtually, etc.

At the end of the day, we were successful in helping more financial professionals and their clients prepare for and live more confidently in retirement.

What’s your main focus right now? 

We’re always focused on our mission of protecting more people.

Protective recently released a new program: goals-based retirement income planning with Michael Finke, Ph.D. from The American College. This program provides specialized strategies for people to evaluate income needs and understand risks that may affect retirement.

Ultimately, the goals-based retirement planning program offers strategies to protect clients’ long-term retirement objectives.

With 40-year highs in inflation and rising interest rates, and only one-third of Americans retiring with some type of defined benefit plan, we’re excited to develop these resources to provide protection for more people. The program helps bridge the gap that exists for many people between retirement savings and income.

We created a whitepaper to develop a goals-based income plan. There is a four-step program:

Determine your lifestyle and legacy priorities.
Estimate your retirement lifestyle by tracking your fixed, inflexible expenses. After that, estimate flexible expenses, such as eating out, traveling, etc.
Evaluate your lifestyle flexibility. Your asset allocation depends on your willingness to spend less if the markets don’t perform.
Plan for a way to fund these expenses and boost your confidence. Evaluate the lifetime income benefits of an annuity to determine if it’s a solution for you.

We collaborated with Dr. Finke because he shares Protective’s view that a goals-based retirement plan is important to consider.

Often, so much focus is put on accumulation of assets, but not as much attention gets paid to decumulation. Dr. Finke takes a more holistic approach and understands the importance of guaranteed lifetime income.