Product Watch: Immediate annuity with flexible benefits unveiled

Golden Retirement Resources Inc. in New York now offers a flexible-benefits annuity, an immediate annuity that enables retirees and near-retirees to accumulate benefits within a single contract by making periodic contributions over time.

In addition to secure pension income, the annuity offers optional caregiver, surviving-spouse and legacy income benefits, as well as a cost-of-living-adjustment option. It also allows certain income benefits to be exchanged and otherwise adjusted in response to changes in a retiree’s life circumstances.

The ability to fund the flexible-benefits annuity with periodic contributions to a single annuity will enable investors to avoid the significant timing risk associated with making a one-time contribution, says Golden Retirement.

JPMorgan expands securities lending

* JPMorgan Investor Services of New York is now offering non- custodial securities lending.

Until recently, the JPMorgan securities lending program was available only to those clients whose assets were under custody with the firm.

By making the product available to a larger client base, the program will be able to offer flexible alternatives to its existing model.

PaineWebber adds Neuberger accounts

* Neuberger Berman Inc.’s all-cap-core and small-cap-core portfolios have been added to ACCESS, UBS PaineWebber Inc.’s separately managed account platform.

Concurrently, New York-based Neuberger Berman has also renamed its managed-accounts practice – formerly the consultant services group – the managed-account group, to more closely reflect its operations.

Alliance renames distribution unit

* Alliance Capital Management LP in New York has renamed its mutual fund distribution subsidiary AllianceBernstein Investment Research and Management Inc.

The unit was previously known as Alliance Fund Distributors Inc.

While the names of the retail fund distribution group and the mutual funds it offers have changed, Alliance Capital will remain the group’s parent company.

Manulife offers 457 sales tool kit

* The Manufacturers Life Insurance Co. (USA) in Boston has introduced a new sales tool kit for Section 457 plans.

The kit highlights the benefits of these non-qualified deferred-compensation plans, and provides a new way for employers to attract top-level executives to non-profit organizations.

Section 457 plans enable non-profit groups to provide additional retirement income to key employees.

The tool kit also explains how life insurance may be used as a funding vehicle for these plans, providing tax-deferred accumulations and cost recovery through the tax-free death benefit.

Managed-account service opens to reps

* Vista Analytics LLC will provide the investment representatives of CFG/H. Beck Inc. access to iMAP, Vista’s individually managed account platform.

Vista is a Sugarland, Texas-based provider of managed-account services.

CFG/H. Beck is an independent broker-dealer in Rockville, Md.

Moody’s upgrades portfolio product

* Moody’s KMV in San Francisco has added a feature called LossCalc to its Portfolio Manager product.

LossCalc is used to predict recovery rates for debt instruments that have defaulted.

The product’s predictive power is based on estimations of loss given default – the amount a creditor will lose if a borrower defaults – that are validated against Moody’s KMV’s database of default and recovery information.

LossCalc is aimed at commercial banks, insurance companies, corporations and asset managers with corporate-credit exposure.

Moody’s KMV is a unit of Moody’s Corp. of New York.

Money.net, CBOE in online data pact

* Money.net Inc. a New York-based provider of real-time financial market data, has agreed to offer subscription-based real-time financial tracking tools to users of the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s website at cboe.com.

Money.net will offer two CBOE-branded services: streaming real-time quotes for $19.95 a month and Real-Time Snap Quotes for $11.95 a month. The services offer institutional-grade resources to individual investors.