Annuity Settlement Site

Attention Annuity Owners

Unsuitable annuity? Annuity not as promised? Fees to get out too high? Not enough liquidity?

The list goes on and on.

There is finally a way to escape from your unsuitable annuity if you qualify:

Annuities are very often misappropriately sold. Unfortunately, the ones who end up paying for it are the unsuspecting consumers. You may be one of them. There are many disgruntled annuity owners and many of them are not to blame. Many of them were steered in the wrong direction by their insurance agent or financial advisor.

Now, if you go to the annuity settlement form at AnnuityMD.com, you can see if you are having the issues that may qualify you for a return of your money including damages.

With that said, you can also see our Annuity Report that has helped hundreds of consumers avoid the mistakes that are made when purchasing annuities. This is a 100 page resource guide that is second to none in the world on annuity information.

Hopefully this information helps and it's information that you act on.


Sincerely,

Tony Bahu
CEO
AnnuityMD.com

AnnuityMD.com has been committed to providing consumers with the absolute best information on annuities. Why can we do that? Because we do not sell annuities. Most people who provide annuity information are annuity marketing companies. Their goal is to get you to buy an annuity.

Getting Out of My Annuity

Annuities: How to Get Out of My Annuity

The following applies to equity index annuities, fixed annuties, and variable annuities and in some cases immediate annuities.

Let's just cut to the chase here. There have been many e-mails coming in the last few days regarding the new information that has been posted on AnnuityMD.com so I would like to clarify.

Many annuities that are sold are sold inappropriately. There are many types of unsuitable sales that happen and many reasons that cause these sales to be inappropriate. The bottom line is if you feel you were deceived, you can be helped.

There is now a program at AnnuityMD.com that allows you to find out if you were deceived. If you feel like you were sold an unsuitable annuity, then it probably makes sense to go to AnnuityMD.com and see if there is recourse you can take.

Therefore, you may be entitled to receive your money back. Particularly if you were maliciously sold a bad annuity. And there is expert help to assist you in determining if that is the case.

Lifetime Income Annuities: Not on your life

Lifetime Income Annuities Promise Lifetime income. But for most, a very raw deal indeed.

Has an annuity salesperson of “financial advisor/planner” scared you, mom and dad, or grandpa or grandma into thinking they will outlive their money, becoming destitute in their golden years? What a clever fear sale indeed. Yes, it’s true that people are living much longer and they need to plan better to stretch their money over more expected years.

So bingo! Here’s the solution offered by the “trusted advisor”: a guaranteed, lifetime income. That’s right, in return for your giving your money to an insurance company, you will receive a predictable income for as long as you and if you are married, your spouse live. But wait… There’s a few catches and some basic math that isn’t often explained by the annuity seller.

For starters, unless you select a period certain benefit, if you die the next day in a car accident (for example), you have made a large, non-deductible charitable gift to… That’s right, the insurance company. They keep all of your money with nothing payable to your family. Ok, let’s now assume you instead live to be 90. The rate of return on that annuity may only be in the 2-3% range (and that’s before taxes). Granted, if you live longer, the rate of return increases. Annuity buyers are fooled easily with these income annuities for one simple reason. They are shown that if you put $100,000 in the annuity, you get say $7,000/year back. That’s a 7% return right? In a word, nope! It’s your own money back (zero return) for the first 14 plus years then you start getting a return after then.

Also, during that first 14 years, you have to pay income tax on a portion of the payment (under section IRC §72). So effectively, it may take many years more to get into the positive and earn any return. Any wonder why insurance companies are so rich and agent’s can be paid so much for offering so little?

Written by Steven Roth of Wealth Management International

Tony Bahu
CEO
AnnuityMD.com

Equity Indexed Annuities – High Hopes but low returns

Equity Indexed Annuities Promise Stock market returns without stock market risk (or not)

Equity Indexed Annuity salespeople most often tell you how great these products are. And just as fast the salesperson pulls out their annuity application, starts writing and before you know it, a pen has been thrust into your hand to seal the deal. Not so fast. There’s a lot about these products that isn’t being told to you. And what’s being kept from you is for a reason. First, annuities are sold by, well… salespeople.

I know what you’re probably thinking, my advisor is a professional, a licensed, experienced, yadda, yadda. Well, that may be true, but the product is the product, no matter who is pitching you. Understand that the reward (commission) is very high for these complex annuities. The slick brochure, or slick salesperson, advisor, insert your term of preference, is not giving you the whole story. How do I know this? 90% of the transactions I have reviewed for clients have in no way matched what the clients thought they had bought. Then there are dozens of negative annuity articles written by excellent sources such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Kiplinger, Smart Money, etc. And guess what these articles have in common? They slam annuity sales tactics and warn investors. Lastly, there are several multi-million dollar class action lawsuits against annuity sellers for, well… fraud.

After extensive studies, both those conducted by outside independent agencies, as well as my personal and very intimate reviews of dozens of annuities (including the biggest and most respected insurance companies) arrives at one truth. That truth is that many Equity indexed Annuities will give you horribly low returns, between 40% - 60% of the market’s return, before being hit with ordinary income tax under the terrible LIFO and IRD rules. Yep, no lower capital gains or tax on gains forgiveness for your family like you would get on other alternatives.

There’s good news though. If you are already in one of these annuities, with the right help, you may be able to get your money and losses back. And in case you were wondering if the salesperson will help you here, you might also want to ask the wolf to baby sit the hens while you go out to dinner.

Written by Steven Roth of Wealth Management International

Tony Bahu
CEO
AnnuityMD.com

Annuity Lawsuits and Unsuitable Annuities

Unsuitable Annuits

Thinking that you own an unsuitable annuity and knowing for a fact you own one are two totally separate issues. Let me explain what I mean.

Annuities have advantages and disadvantages. These should be explained to you up front prior to purchase but mostly they aren't. Why you ask. Because, it is not profitable for your insurance agent to tell you the bad things and quite honestly, in my opinion, they just don't. If you knew all the bad things about what you are potentially going to 'buy' or invest in, you might just change your mind.

Annuities: The Pretenses You Purchase Under

It's not whether or not you like everything about your annuity that makes it suitable or unsuitable. It's how it was presented to you and under what pretenses you purchased the annuity. If you were told your equity index annuity would earn 'better than stock market returns' THEN MOST LIKELY YOU WERE DEFRAUDED. You may have purchased this under false pretenses. However, if your annuity didn't quite earn as much as you wish it did because of poor market conditions, that is a totally different story.

Annuities are often misrepresented and sold under false pretenses. Ultimately, proving that, or discovering how it was done is the trick. There are ways to guess and ways to know definitively. It is often not easily discernible by an average consumer. Often times it takes professional help.

But where can you get this help from? I mean, another annuity agent is going to tell you it's bad so he can get you out and into another one. An attorney may or may not be able to help you depending on their experience (By the way, we will be doing a FULL article on why attorneys are often unsuccessful at recovering moneys for clients in an unsuitable annuity).

Getting Help With Your Unsuitable Annuity

There are ways to get help and we will look at those in CLOSE detail in the upcoming posts. In fact, I will identify several points as to how you may be clued into if what was sold to you was unsuitable. This will put you so far ahead of just shooting in the dark.

Annuities are grossly misrepresented but figuring out if you are a victim of annuity fraud is not easy. We are here to help. Feel free to continue reading or go to our site to get more information.

Sincerely,

Tony Bahu
CEO
AnnuityMD.com

Annuity Lawsuits: What's The Deal???

Annuity Lawsuits: Today's Challenge

Annuity lawsuits are becoming a lot more prevalent these days. Fixed annuities, Equity Index Annuities, and Variable Annuities are all coming under scrutiny and justifiably so. There has been tremendous abuse connected to annuity sales to consumers.

However, many people are now finding that there is some recourse. But, the challenge is proving that there was some sort of negligence or willful misconduct. So that becomes the challenge. The reason is simple. You may be in your annuity and know that there is something wrong but not quite know how to pinpoint it. Or worse, you may absolutely know there is something wrong with your annuity but not know EXACTLY what is wrong. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.



Annuity Lawyers: What's the Problem?

Sometimes, unless you are well versed with annuities, it is hard to what the problem is with your annuity. You may have lack of performance due to high fees, a poor crediting method, a tax time-bomb, limited liquidity, or one or more other problems, but not quite know to what degree or to what extent. But that is quite critical when going to an attorney. Chances are the attorney, unless he specializes in annuity lawsuits and is very familiar with the inner workings of annuities is NOT going to know how to assess the TRUE DAMAGE that was done to you in your annuity. Let me repeat---most attorneys don't know how to assess the damage done to you unless they are annuity and financial experts and most of them aren't. So you have to hope that they have the right experts to assist them. Also, they have to also be on top of securities, insurance, and other complex laws. Otherwise, your case may not be successful and you have lost your shot, and unless the attorney is on contingency, paid a lot of money for nothing.

The Major Key to Recovery from Your Unsuitable Annuity

Knowing what your losses or damages are play a MAJOR role in recovery from your annuity company as well. Thesefactors are critical to get right if you are torecover what you are entitled to from the annuity company. If you cannot quantify your damages and explain why it shouldn’t have happened, then how can you have recourse? You must be able to prove that there are damages, the extent of the damage, and how the agent and or the annuity company are responsible. So unless you can do that or have a resource to do that (if you don't, we're going to show you how), your recovery efforts will probably be unsuccessful.

So the bottom line is, annuity lawsuits have been more prevalent but the ones that have gone favorably for the consumer have been the ones where the consumer goes in with a FULL assessment of the true damages properly documented and the right argument for why they should get out of penalties, recover lost interest, etc.. Stay tuned for the next several days and weeks to learn in full detail what to look for and how to take action. Alternatively, if you feel like you are in an unsuitable annuity and want to take action right away, feel free to visit AnnuityMD.com to begin the discovery process. IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS


Sincerely,

Tony Bahu
CEO
AnnuityMD.com