Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

The legislation known as the Secure 2.0 Act — short for the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement 2.0 Act — may have become law a year ago, but that doesn’t mean that clients are tired of hearing about it, or that they know all they should know about the landmark retirement reform law. In fact, to Terri Fiedler, president of retirement services at Corebridge Financial, the Secure 2.0 Act’s Dec. 29 passage anniversary creates an opportunity for deeper planning discussions with existing clients and prospects alike. Experts tell ThinkAdvisor it is also important for advisors themselves to understand how the Secure 2.0 Act, alongside its namesake predecessor from 2019, are setting up underserved populations to grow their wealth and become the next generation of retail wealth management clients. For example, the laws’ provisions to expand access to workplace retirement savings benefits should help many more Americans get and stay invested for the long term. All in all, Fiedler argues, early 2024 should be a great time for advisors to spark meaningful planning conversations with clients while also asking bigger questions about their own approach to retirement and wealth management. Emergency Savings and Secure 2.0 As Fiedler notes, in 2024,...

What You Need to Know New York would have become the second most populous state to ban these clauses, joining California. JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, for instance, reported pressuring the governor’s office. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) vetoed legislation that would have banned employee non-competes in New York, after facing intense pressure from Wall Street, hospitals, and business groups that opposed the measure, according to sources familiar with the matter. The legislation (S3100) rejected by Hochul Friday would have barred employers from imposing contract language that prohibits employees or other “covered individuals” from obtaining employment after leaving their current jobs. “After weeks of negotiations where we compromised heavily to try to pass a law that would at least ban non-competes for low- and mid-wage workers, I’m incredibly disappointed that our final offer was rejected,” said state Sen. Sean Ryan (D), who sponsored the bill, in a statement. New York would have become the second most populous state to ban these clauses, joining California, which has had the restriction in place for more than a century. Supporters of the proposal said it would spur innovation and help New York compete with California for talent and new startups, particularly in the tech...

Early death tracking figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the recent surge in COVID-19 cases is continuing to increase overall U.S. mortality. COVID-19, pneumonia and influenza caused at least 2,093, or 8.6%, of the 24,056 deaths included in the very earliest, incomplete death count data for the week ending Dec. 16. COVID-19 alone caused about 3% of the deaths, up from 1% during the week ending July 1, when the disease seemed to be fading away, and up from 2.9% during the week ending Dec. 3. The earliest reasonably complete death numbers are for the week ending Dec. 2. They show that the United States as a whole reported 51,863 deaths for that. That’s 9.8% lower than the number recorded for the comparable week in 2022 but 8.4% higher than the number recorded for the comparable week in 2019, before COVID-19 came to light. What it means: Any retirement or estate planning forecasters who built significant mortality improvement into 2023 projections may have to recalibrate. The context: The total number of U.S. deaths from all causes for the period running from Jan. 1, 2023, through Dec. 2, 2023, was 2.8 million. That was down 5.9% from the total...

“Stocks lead earnings, which lead the economy, and it’s absolutely ridiculous when I hear people saying ‘I’m going to wait, the recession will tell us when to buy stocks.’ No, it won’t. Stocks tell you when we’re going to have a recession,” he said. “People have become too formulaic and stuck in their ways.” For 2024, Belski expects a resilient labor market, easing consumer-price pressures and rate cuts in the second half of the year to drive the S&P 500 to 5,100. John Stoltzfus, Oppenheimer Heading into 2023, Stoltzfus, the firm’s chief investment strategist, saw the S&P 500 closing the year at 4,400. At the time, his call was one of the rosiest on the street. The forecaster said inflation trending lower supported sentiment, and while bears deemed earnings estimates too optimistic, he called them “right-sized.” “The markets became grossly oversold in the process of the selloffs that occurred in 2022,” he said. “Bear markets are always oversold, and then it’s recognized that they’re oversold, and you get some kind of a rally.” He’s staying optimistic, predicting the S&P 500 will hit 5,200 before 2024 is out. Savita Subramanian, Bank of America Subramanian, head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy,...