Annuities continue to get short shrift from those nearing or in Retirement, but if you describe them with a different label — like a Guaranteed Lifetime Income — they are viewed much more favourably, according to a study released Tuesday. I summarize the main results of the Canadian Guaranteed Lifetime Income Study in my latest MoneySense Retired Money column, which you can access by clicking on the highlighted headline: Guaranteed Income is a No Brainer: Just Don’t Call it an Annuity.

The study was conducted by Greenwald & Associates and CANNEX for two Canadian insurance companies, Great West Life and Sun Life in February with 1,003 Canadians aged 55 to 75 with financial assets of at least $100,000 (not counting a home. It found only 45% are highly confident they will be able to maintain their standard of living in retirement, assuming a life expectancy of 85.

I’d argue that the majority who ARE confident are probably the beneficiaries of employer-sponsored Defined Benefit pension plans, ideally the kind of inflation-indexed ones that many public servants enjoy. They are of course becoming much less common in the private sector.

This site and my various columns have long argued that, to paraphrase Pensionize Your Nest Egg co-author Moshe Milevsky, DB pensions and Government-provided equivalents like CPP and OAS can be regarded as REAL pensions, because they provide a guaranteed stream of income for as long as you live.

By contrast, investment portfolios comprising RRSPs, TFSAs, group RRSPs and Defined Contribution plans do not in themselves constitute the kind of “real” pension that Milevsky says should be one part of a diversified retirement income strategy. It’s up to retirees to convert their retirement nest eggs into real pensions and one of the most common ways to do this is to buy annuities.

Consider that investors hoping to live on RRSP/RRIF interest, dividends and capital gains have no guarantee their money will last as long as they will. With still-low interest rates and the possibility of stock-market losses, and the constant spectre of rising inflation, longevity risk and the possibility of outliving your money is a real concern.

The study lists several perceived positives and negatives of annuities and segregated funds. And it found the percentage of Canadians who rate GLI as a “highly valuable” supplement to government retirement sources like CPP and OAS has jumped from 60% in 2015 to 80% today.

Note too that Longevity and outliving savings is a particular concern for women, along with not being able to afford long-term care expenses. It’s a fact that women have longer life expectancies,  and the study shows their retirement worries are greater as a result.

Women more concerned about running out of money in old age

The study conducted by CANNEX and Greenwald & Associates found 34% of women are highly concerned about not being able to maintain their standard of living once they retire, compared to only 17% of men. Continue Reading…