The Biden administration has put a number of new policies that are affecting annuities, and while some of them may be unintentional a number of companies may be moving to offshore havens to escape the pressure. Annuity issuers are being acquired by private companies and then becoming nomadic firms that are mainly housing themselves in Bermuda. The current Build Back Better act will affect annuity and insurance contracts with updates to the base erosion and anti-abuse tax. Additionally, many annuity issuers aren’t positive that the variety of retirement vehicles that are offering annuities might not be so great moving forward. Finally, low yields in are tricky for annuity issuers because they rely on traditionally high yield debt to finance the pseudo insurance contracts.

FINSUM: Annuities are one of the oldest financial contracts, it’s bizarre how much new regulation is being sprung on them in 2021.