From securities to life insurance, marketing regulations align across states and products and focus on promoting truthfulness and transparency.

A fixed annuity also known as a MYGA can be a smart investment choice for those looking to diversify their portfolios while earning higher than bank deposit rates.

Robo advisers can be very practical and efficient for investors. While robos generally are beneficial as they often invest in low-cost funds and ETFs, ideally, they should also include quality single-premium immediate annuities (SPIAs) and deferred-income annuities (DIAs) to simplify investment planning and allow retirees to spend more.

Retirees are often faced with the fear of outliving their assets. This fear, also known as longevity risk, has been eased by the availability of annuities, specifically annuities that I’ve termed in my paper as guaranteed income products, or GIPs, that offer fixed payments until death.

Congress has been devoting a lot more attention to annuities lately--and with good reason. As discussed in a recent Morningstar paper, some annuities that we call GIPs, or guaranteed income products, fill a role that is sorely lacking in the retirement investment catalog: They supplement Social Security by providing stable streams of income during retirement.

Although they remain drastically underused as a retirement income tool, annuities have the potential to provide important benefits to retirees. High-quality products that guarantee an income stream can greatly improve the stability of people’s retirement by disbursing steady payments over the course of their lifetime. READ MORE

The DOL rule is cumbersome for plan sponsors and an opportunity for annuity sponsors, but it could be a lot more.