Liberty offers a no fuss Life Annuity that leaves a legacy

Liberty has repackaged its retirement solution, the Life Annuity with Capital Protection package that allows retirees to earn an income through retirement and leave an inheritance, without the need for underwriting.

The Liberty Life Annuity with Capital Protection (LACP) retirement solution has simplicity and flexibility built into it from the start.

Liberty’s solution combines its Life Annuity offering a guaranteed income, with its Lifestyle Protector Life Cover benefit. The Life Annuity offers a guaranteed income until the passing of the individual and the Life Cover ensures that there is a payout to the individual’s dependants. A solution that ensures an income in retirement and a legacy that lasts.

Life Annuities are increasingly popular in today’s market because they offer a guaranteed stable income for life, so that a person’s retirement can be all that they want it to be.
The strength of these annuities for the individual is that their income is unaffected by market volatility or investment returns and will pay out as long as they are alive, irrespective of how long this may be.

This difference to the alternative, a Living Annuity, is that with a Life Annuity, once the retiree passes, no funds are inherited by dependants. A Living Annuity pays out any remaining funds and the amount would depend on how long the individual drew an income and how well stocked the pot of money was through retirement.

The LACP solution gives a person the ability to structure a guaranteed income through a Life Annuity, but with the added benefit, that they can specify an amount to be paid to their beneficiaries upon passing.

“We’re offering the integration of life cover with retirement income, to create a guaranteed income with a pay-out at the end to beneficiaries. The real upside, is that with this solution retirees have guaranteed access to Life Cover, with no additional health questions or medical tests, and the certainty that there will be no unexpected increases in life cover premiums over time,” says Tom Crotty, Head of Risk Optimisation and Product House Integration at Liberty.

He says the LACP retirement offering has been designed to offer both simplicity and flexibility for clients and advisers.

Unlike many other products on the market, with Liberty’s LACP offering, clients can choose the size of Life Cover they want to pass on at the start of their retirement. However, with the additional flexibility of being able to reduce the life cover amount at any time after inception if their legacy, protection or income needs change over time.

“We’ve designed things so clients have the ability to reduce or even terminate the life cover portion if they so choose, which means they can adjust their retirement income upward to their needs as they age.”

In addition, clients can select a level income or escalating annuity income which matches the demands of inflation.

“We want to offer people embarking on their retirement journey the long-term certainty of a life annuity, combined with the flexibility to change it so they can live the lives they want without having to worry about restrictive rules that tell them what do with their savings. An individual’s financial retirement journey may have unexpected changes, and we want them to have the flexibility to adapt should they need to, perhaps if medical costs become too high or if leaving a legacy to your beneficiaries is no longer an expectation.”

“Our added life protection policy allows them to leave a legacy behind, but in a way that it never becomes a burden on them in terms of not having to submit to underwriting, and having the option to change the life insured amounts over time,” Crotty says.