Term
Annuity
20 stories mention it
An annuity is an insurance contract that pays out a stream of income, often for life, in exchange for a lump sum or series of premiums paid in.
A policyholder hands premium to an insurer, which invests it and later returns it as scheduled payments—monthly income in retirement, a lump sum at a set date, or a payout tied to how an underlying investment performs. The insurer is the party bearing the risk that the policyholder outlives their savings, since a lifetime annuity keeps paying no matter how long the holder lives.
Annuities exist to convert savings into guaranteed income, which is a different job from life insurance's job of protecting dependents against an early death. The hard part is structure: fixed, variable and indexed annuities split up how much investment risk and upside the policyholder keeps versus hands to the insurer, and riders for guaranteed withdrawals or death benefits add further layers that are easy for a buyer to misread as simple savings products.
In insurance technology, annuities are notoriously paper-heavy and slow to issue and service compared with other product lines, so vendors build platforms around illustration and quoting, e-application and straight-through processing, and administration systems that let advisors and carriers move sales and in-force business off manual, form-based workflows.
Written by Insurtech Daily.
For the running coverage rather than the definition, see the Health and life insurance hub. For the companies in this business, see life insurance companies.
Companies in these stories
Annuity in the news
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Mariner Re launches with $750m TIAA investment to support Symetra’s annuity growth
Symetra Life Insurance Company, a provider of life, retirement and employee benefit insurance products, and Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), a US-based retirement services and financial…
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Symetra partners with TIAA to launch sidecar-like life and annuity reinsurer Mariner Re
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Fortitude Re parent acquires Dayforward annuity insurtech platform
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Sureify Expands CoreCONNECT™ Platform with New aiCONNECT Purpose-Built for the Life & Annuity Industry
Built to bring trained AI models and agents to power new business, service, and operations.
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Fortitude Re buys Dayforward to build its own annuity origination platform
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Marsh launches Archer platform for life and annuity reinsurers, sidecars, SPIs and cells
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Fortitude Re acquires insurtech to build its own annuity pipeline
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Fortitude Re expands insurtech capabilities with annuity platform buy
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Sureify Expands Life & Annuity New Business with LifetimeACQUIRE, Connecting Quote to Book with Headless Architecture
New capabilities give carriers and distributors flexibility to shape the evolving digital acquisition experience around their own distribution models, meeting the ecosystem wherever they may be.
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Chariot Re raises $700 million to expand life and annuity reinsurance platform
Chariot Re launched in July 2025 and has since reinsured approximately $20 billion of liabilities through three transactions.
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Wilton Re partners with Sun Life to launch Windsor Life Re, a life annuity sidecar-like reinsurer
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Wilton Re and Sun Life partner on new life & annuity reinsurance vehicle
Sun Life Financial Inc. and Wilton Re have entered into a definitive agreement to establish a strategic reinsurance and asset management partnership, combining their capabilities across life and annuity reinsurance and…
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iCapital Is Buying Annuity And Insurance Tech Firm Hexure
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iCapital® Acquires Hexure to Create the Industry’s First End-to-End Annuity and Insurance Technology Platform
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iCapital Acquires Hexure To Build Platform For End-To-End Insurance And Annuity Technology
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Life insurance and annuity providers behind on user friendliness: JD Power
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Life Insurance, Annuities Sector Must Move Closer To Wealth Sector – Zinnia
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Zinnia Announces Major Cloud Migration Milestone to Support Processing of Over 55% of Digital Annuity Sales in U.S.
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iPipeline and FIDx Expanding and Strengthening Relationship to Deliver Holistic Annuity Platform
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F&G and Accenture Collaborate to Optimize Technology Platform Capabilities for Retail Annuity Growth