Of course the annuity salesmen know...and will fully exploit the upcoming baby-boom fear factor.

What I find the most scary about this aren't so much the simple life annuities...which, like term life insurance, are pretty comperable and due to competative pricing, will provide only a modest commission to the sales rep and only modest profitability to the insurer...what I find alarming are the insurance-based products that are pitched as high guaranteed income-guaranteed principal products, such as equity indexed annuities, principal guaranteed fixed annuities, guaranteed structured layout annuities, and so on. These products are carefully designed to avoid market variability so as to avoid SEC registration and full disclosure rules. I suspect the next 10-15 years will be profitable to many insurers.

BruceM