Annuities disclosure for PAS
Introduction
An individual annuity is a long-term investment contract that provides you with an option to annuitize at retirement. An annuitized contract can potentially provide you with a regular stream of income, for as long as you live or for a designated period of time after your retirement. Individual annuities also typically include a death benefit.
Assets in an individual annuity grow tax deferred until they are withdrawn, and there are no contribution limits under federal tax law, unless the annuity is utilized as a funding vehicle for a qualified retirement plan or an IRA. Withdrawals of taxable amounts will be subject to ordinary income tax and possible mandatory federal income tax withholding. If taken prior to age 59 1/2, a 10% IRS penalty may also apply.
Revenue/Marketing/Education/Training/Allowance
Some variable annuity product sponsors pay Park Avenue Securities (PAS), Guardian's retail broker/dealer subsidiary, revenue/ marketing/ education and training for support of our Financial Professionals. Since this information may be an important consideration in your decision to purchase a particular variable annuity product, you should read more about these payments in each variable annuity prospectus and statement of additional information. PAS may receive annual compensation of up to 0.25 percent on sales and/or .01 percent of the assets held in applicable variable annuities. For example, if you held $10,000 in variable annuities from the applicable sponsor for one year, PAS could receive up to $26.
It is important to note that PAS Financial Professionals do not receive any portion of these fees which are separate from and in addition to other fees and charges applicable to each product.
Professionals of variable annuity sponsors are, subject to the discretion of Branch Office Managers, provided access to our branch offices and Financial Professionals for educational, marketing, and other promotional efforts. Although all variable annuity sponsors are provided with such access, some sponsors devote more staff and resources to these activities and therefore may have enhanced opportunities to promote their variable annuity products to our Financial Professionals. This fact could in turn lead our Financial Professionals to focus on those variable annuity products when recommending variable annuity products to our clients, instead of on variable annuities from those product sponsors that do not commit similar resources to education, marketing, and other promotional efforts.
The listing of individual variable annuity sponsors currently participating in this type of support is set forth below:
individual variable annuity sponsors | |
|---|---|
Lincoln Financial | 0.10% annually based on new sales for each calendar year |
Pacific Life | 0.15% annually based on first $20 million of new sales for each calendar year; thereafter, 0.20% annually based on new sales above $20 million for each calendar year |
Transamerica | 0.25% annually based on new sales for each calendar year and 0.01% annually based on assets under management |
Other Expense Reimbursements: PAS and/or your Financial Professional may be reimbursed by variable annuity companies or their affiliates or other service providers for the expenses PAS and/or your Financial Professional may incur for various sales meetings, seminars, and conferences held in the normal course of business. Although variable annuity companies independently decide what they will spend on these activities, we are aware that some companies allocate their promotional budgets based upon prior sales and asset levels and that they work with our branch offices or Financial Advisors to plan promotional and educational activities on the basis of such budgets. We do not control variable annuity companies' determinations of how to allocate their promotional budgets or their spending decisions in this regard. Note that PAS policies establish procedures intended to ensure that the acceptance of the type of compensation described in this paragraph is carried out in conformity with applicable industry regulations. In particular, all proposed compensation of this type must be fully disclosed to, and approved in writing by, the PAS Compliance Department prior to acceptance.
FINRA rules prohibit Financial Professionals from receiving cash or non-cash compensation unless prior approval is obtained from the Financial Professional’s employing broker/dealer. Based upon this rule, no Financial Professional may accept cash or non-cash compensation from any product sponsor, unless express prior written approval is obtained from the PAS Compliance Department. The underlying premise of the rule involves guarding against influencing a Financial Professional to offer to a customer one particular product over another based on the opportunity to receive cash or non-cash compensation from a product sponsor.