What Is Annuitization?

Annuitization is the process of converting an annuity investment into a series of periodic income payments. Annuities may be annuitized for a specific period or for the life of the annuitant. Annuity payments may only be made to the annuitant or to the annuitant and a surviving spouse in a joint life arrangement. Annuitants can arrange for beneficiaries to receive a portion of the annuity balance upon their death.

Understanding Annuitization

The concept of annuitization dates back centuries, but life insurance companies formalized it into a contract offered to the public in the 1800s.

Individuals can enter into a contract with a life insurance company that involves the exchange of a lump sum of capital for a promise to make periodic payments for a specified period or for the lifetime of the individual who is the annuitant.

How Annuitization Works

Upon receiving the lump sum of capital, the life insurer makes calculations to determine the annuity payout amount. The key factors used in the calculation are the annuitant’s current age, life expectancy, and the projected interest rate the insurer will credit to the annuity balance. The resulting payout rate establishes the amount of income that the insurer will pay whereby the insurer will have returned the entire annuity balance plus interest to the annuitant by the end of the payment period.

The payment period may be a specified period or the life expectancy of the investor. If the insurer determines that the investor’s life expectancy is 25 years, then that becomes the payment period. The significant difference between using a specified period versus a lifetime period is that, if the annuitant lives beyond their life expectancy, the life insurer must continue the payments until the annuitant’s death. This is the insurance aspect of an annuity in which the life insurer assumes the risk of extended longevity.

Annuity Payments Based on a Single Life

Annuity payments based on a single life cease when the annuitant dies, and the insurer retains the remaining annuity balance. When payments are based on joint lives, the payments continue until the death of the second annuitant. When an insurer covers joint lives, the amount of the annuity payment is reduced to cover the longevity risk of the additional life.

Annuitants may designate a beneficiary to receive the annuity balance through a refund option. Annuitants can select refund options for varying periods of time during which, if death occurs, the beneficiary will receive the proceeds. For instance, if an annuitant selects a refund option for a period certain of 10 years, death must occur within that 10-year period for the insurer to pay the refund to the beneficiary. An annuitant may select a lifetime refund option, but the length of the refund period will affect the payout rate. The longer the refund period is, the lower the payout rate.

Changes to Annuities in Retirement Accounts

In 2019, the U.S. Congress passed the SECURE Act, which made changes to retirement plans, including those containing annuities. The good news is that the new ruling makes annuities more portable. For example, if you change jobs, your 401(k) annuity from your old job can be rolled over into the 401(k) plan at your new job.

However, the SECURE Act removed some of the legal risks for retirement plans. The ruling limits the ability for account holders to sue the retirement plan if it doesn’t pay the annuity payments—as in the case of bankruptcy. Note that a safe harbor provision of the SECURE Act prevents retirement plans (and not annuity providers) from being sued.

The SECURE Act also eliminated the stretch provision for those beneficiaries who inherit an IRA. In years past, a beneficiary of an IRA could stretch out the required minimum distributions from the IRA over their lifetime, which helped to stretch out the tax burden.

With the new ruling, non-spousal beneficiaries must distribute all of the funds from the inherited IRA within 10 years of the death of the owner. However, there are exceptions to the new law. By no means is this article a comprehensive review of the SECURE Act. As a result, it’s important for investors to consult a financial professional to review the new changes to retirement accounts, annuities, and their designated beneficiaries.

What Is Anti Money Laundering (AML)?

Anti money laundering (AML) refers to the web of laws, regulations, and procedures aimed at uncovering efforts to disguise illicit funds as legitimate income. Money laundering seeks to conceal crimes ranging from small-time tax evasion and drug trafficking to public corruption and the financing of groups designated as terrorist organizations.

AML legislation was a response to the growth of the financial industry, the lifting of international capital controls and the growing ease of conducting complex chains of financial transactions.

A high-level United Nations panel has estimated annual money laundering flows at $1.6 trillion, accounting for 2.7% of global GDP in 2020.

Understanding Anti Money Laundering (AML)

AML regulations in the U.S. have expanded from the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act’s requirement that banks report cash deposits of more than $10,000 to a complex regulatory framework requiring financial institutions to conduct due diligence on customers and to seek out and report suspicious transactions. The European Union and other jurisdictions have adopted similar measures.

Know Your Customer

For banks, compliance starts with verifying the identity of new clients, a process sometimes called Know Your Customer (KYC). In addition to establishing the customer’s identity, banks are required to understand the nature of a client’s activity and verify deposited funds are from a legitimate source.

The KYC process also requires banks and brokers to screen new customers against lists of crime suspects, individuals and companies under economic sanctions, and “politically exposed persons”—foreign public officials, their family members and close associates.

Money laundering can be divided into three steps:

• Deposit of illicit funds into the financial system
• Transactions designed to conceal the illicit origin of the funds, known as “layering”
• Use of laundered funds to acquire real estate, financial instruments or commercial investments

The KYC process aims to stop such schemes at the first deposit window.

Customer Due Diligence

Customer due diligence is integral to the KYC process, for example by ensuring the information a potential customer provides is accurate and legitimate. But it is also a constant process extending to customers old and new, and their transactions.

Customer due diligence requires ongoing assessment of the risk of money laundering posed by each client and the use of that risk-based approach to conduct closer due diligence for those identified as higher non-compliance risks. That includes identifying customers as they are added to sanctions and other AML lists.

According to the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the four core requirements of customer due diligence in the U.S. are:

• Identifying and verifying the customer’s identity
• Identifying and verifying the identity of beneficial owners with a stake of 25% or more in a company opening an account
• Understanding the nature and purpose of customer relationships to develop customer risk profiles
• Conducting ongoing monitoring to identify and report suspicious transactions and update customer information 

Customer due diligence seeks to detect money laundering strategies including layering and structuring, also known as “smurfing”—the breaking up of large money laundering transactions into smaller ones to evade reporting limits and avoid scrutiny.

One rule in place to foil layering is the AML holding period, which requires deposits to remain in an account for a minimum of five trading days before they can be transferred elsewhere.

Financial institutions are required to develop and implement a written AML compliance policy, which much be approved in writing by a member of senior management and overseen by a designated AML compliance officer. These programs must specify “risk-based procedures for conducting ongoing customer due diligence” and conduct “ongoing monitoring to identify and report suspicious transactions.”

History of Anti Money Laundering

Efforts to police illicit gains have a history stretching back centuries, while the term “money laundering” is only about 100 years old and in wide use for less than 50.

The first major piece of U.S. AML legislation was the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, passed in part to thwart organized crime. In addition to requiring banks to report cash deposits of more than $10,000, the legislation also required banks to identify individuals conducting transactions and to maintain records of transactions. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Bank Secrecy Act’s constitutionality in 1974, the same year “money laundering” entered wide use amid the Watergate scandal.

Additional legislation passed in the 1980s amid increased efforts to fight drug trafficking, in the 1990s to expand financial monitoring and in the 2000s to cut off funding for terrorist organizations.

Anti-money laundering assumed greater global prominence in 1989, when a group of countries and international organizations formed the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Its mission is to devise international standards to prevent money laundering and promote their adoption. In October 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, FATF expanded its mandate to include combating terrorist financing.

Another important organization in the fight against money laundering is the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Like the FATF, the IMF has pressed its member countries to comply with international standards to thwart terrorist financing.

The United Nations included AML provisions in its 1998 Vienna Convention addressing drug trafficking, the 2001 Palermo Convention against international organized crime and the 2005 Merida Convention against corruption.

The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, passed in early 2021, was the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. AML regulations since the Patriot Act of 2001. The 2021 legislation included the Corporate Transparency Act, which made it harder to use shell companies to evade anti-money laundering and economic sanctions measures.

The legislation also subjected cryptocurrency exchanges as well as arts and antiquities dealers to the same customer due diligence requirements as financial institutions.

What Is an Audit?

The term audit usually refers to a financial statement audit. A financial audit is an objective examination and evaluation of the financial statements of an organization to make sure that the financial records are a fair and accurate representation of the transactions they claim to represent. The audit can be conducted internally by employees of the organization or externally by an outside Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firm.

Understanding Audits

Almost all companies receive a yearly audit of their financial statements, such as the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. Lenders often require the results of an external audit annually as part of their debt covenants. For some companies, audits are a legal requirement due to the compelling incentives to intentionally misstate financial information in an attempt to commit fraud. As a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002, publicly traded companies must also receive an evaluation of the effectiveness of their internal controls.

Standards for external audits performed in the United States, called the generally accepted auditing standards (GAAS), are set out by Auditing Standards Board (ASB) of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Additional rules for the audits of publicly traded companies are made by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which was established as a result of SOX in 2002. A separate set of international standards, called the International Standards on Auditing (ISA), were set up by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB).

Types of Audits

External Audits

Audits performed by outside parties can be extremely helpful in removing any bias in reviewing the state of a company’s financials. Financial audits seek to identify if there are any material misstatements in the financial statements. An unqualified, or clean, auditor’s opinion provides financial statement users with confidence that the financials are both accurate and complete. External audits, therefore, allow stakeholders to make better, more informed decisions related to the company being audited.

External auditors follow a set of standards different from that of the company or organization hiring them to do the work. The biggest difference between an internal and external audit is the concept of independence of the external auditor. When audits are performed by third parties, the resulting auditor’s opinion expressed on items being audited (a company’s financials, internal controls, or a system) can be candid and honest without it affecting daily work relationships within the company.

Internal Audits

Internal auditors are employed by the company or organization for whom they are performing an audit, and the resulting audit report is given directly to management and the board of directors. Consultant auditors, while not employed internally, use the standards of the company they are auditing as opposed to a separate set of standards. These types of auditors are used when an organization doesn’t have the in-house resources to audit certain parts of their own operations.

The results of the internal audit are used to make managerial changes and improvements to internal controls. The purpose of an internal audit is to ensure compliance with laws and regulations and to help maintain accurate and timely financial reporting and data collection. It also provides a benefit to management by identifying flaws in internal control or financial reporting prior to its review by external auditors.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Audits

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) also routinely performs audits to verify the accuracy of a taxpayer’s return and specific transactions. When the IRS audits a person or company, it usually carries a negative connotation and is seen as evidence of some type of wrongdoing by the taxpayer. However, being selected for an audit is not necessarily indicative of any wrongdoing.

IRS audit selection is usually made by random statistical formulas that analyze a taxpayer’s return and compare it to similar returns. A taxpayer may also be selected for an audit if they have any dealings with another person or company who was found to have tax errors on their audit.

There are three possible IRS audit outcomes available: no change to the tax return, a change that is accepted by the taxpayer, or a change that the taxpayer disagrees with. If the change is accepted, the taxpayer may owe additional taxes or penalties. If the taxpayer disagrees, there is a process to follow that may include mediation or an appeal.

What Is an Automatic Stabilizer?

Automatic stabilizers are a type of fiscal policy designed to offset fluctuations in a nation’s economic activity through their normal operation without additional, timely authorization by the government or policymakers.

The best-known automatic stabilizers are progressively graduated corporate and personal income taxes, and transfer systems such as unemployment insurance and welfare. Automatic stabilizers are called this because they act to stabilize economic cycles and are automatically triggered without additional government action.

Understanding Automatic Stabilizers

Automatic stabilizers are primarily designed to counter negative economic shocks or recessions, though they can also be intended to “cool off” an expanding economy or to combat inflation. By their normal operation, these policies take more money out of the economy as taxes during periods of rapid growth and higher incomes. They put more money back into the economy in the form of government spending or tax refunds when economic activity slows or incomes fall. This has the intended purpose of cushioning the economy from changes in the business cycle. 

Automatic stabilizers can include the use of a progressive taxation structure under which the share of income that is taken in taxes is higher when incomes are high. The amount then falls when incomes fall due to a recession, job losses, or failing investments. For example, as an individual taxpayer earns higher wages, their additional income may be subjected to higher tax rates based on the current tiered structure. If wages fall, the individual will remain in the lower tax tiers as dictated by their earned income.

Similarly, unemployment insurance transfer payments decline when the economy is in an expansionary phase since there are fewer unemployed people filing claims. Unemployment payments rise when the economy is mired in recession and unemployment is high. When a person becomes unemployed in a manner that makes them eligible for unemployment insurance, they need only file to claim the benefit. The amount of benefit offered is governed by various state and national regulations and standards, requiring no intervention by larger government entities beyond application processing.

Automatic Stabilizers and Fiscal Policy

When an economy is in a recession, automatic stabilizers may by design result in higher budget deficits. This aspect of fiscal policy is a tool of Keynesian economics that uses government spending and taxes to support aggregate demand in the economy during economic downturns.

By taking less money out of private businesses and households in taxes and giving them more in the form of payments and tax refunds, fiscal policy is supposed to encourage them to increase, or at least not decrease, their consumption and investment spending. In this case, the goal of fiscal policy is to help prevent an economic setback from deepening.

Real-World Examples of Automatic Stabilizers

Automatic stabilizers can also be used in conjunction with other forms of fiscal policy that may require specific legislative authorization. Examples of this include one-time tax cuts or refunds, government investment spending, or direct government subsidy payments to businesses or households.

Some examples of these in the United States were the 2008 one-time tax rebates under the Economic Stimulus Act and the $831 billion in federal direct subsidies, tax breaks, and infrastructure spending under the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

In 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act became the largest stimulus package in U.S. history. It provided over $2 trillion in government relief in the form of expanded unemployment benefits, direct payments to families and adults, loans and grants to small businesses, loans to corporate America, and billions of dollars to state and local governments.

Special Considerations

Since they almost immediately respond to changes in income and unemployment, automatic stabilizers are intended to be the first line of defense to turn mild negative economic trends around. However, governments often turn to other types of larger fiscal policy programs to address more severe or lasting recessions or to target specific regions, industries, or politically favored groups in society for extra-economic relief.