Overview
"Retained Assets Accounts" is a term that the insurance industry widely used by the insurance industry to generically describe accounts that hold funds derived from insurance company payments of the benefits from an insurance policy or annuity contract. The Accounts provide the policy's beneficiaries with immediate access to their funds, while paying interest at rates the insurance company typically guarantees with be competitive, on the proceeds left on deposit. In most circumstances, the insurance company paying the benefits itself guarantees the funds in the account.
While the term "Retained Assets Accounts" accurately reflects an insurance company-centric view a better generic name for these Accounts would have been "Benefits Access Accounts" - a phraseology that views the Accounts from a consumer-centric perspective.
Regardless of whether we call them Beneficiary Access or Retained Access Accounts, such Accounts were designed to benefit BOTH the consumers who receive the insurance benefits and the insurance companies who pay them out and maintain the accounts, at no charge, to the consumers.
Over 25 years of actual experience, paying millions of beneficiaries several hundred billions of dollars in benefits through such accounts has borne out the initial research and demonstrated that use of the Accounts to pay benefits on larger claims (typically starting at $10,000 to $25,000, where use of the Accounts is cost justified) is far better method of paying a claim than issuing a lump sum check would be. As will be explained in more detail on this website:
- Accounts provide faster access to the insurance money,
- Accounts pay consumers continuous interest,
- Accounts pay significantly higher interest rates than leading bank averages,
- Accounts have proven remarkably safe,
- Accounts are full faith and credit obligations of the insurance company that owes the benefits, and many Accounts are further backed up by state insurance guarantee funds,
- Accounts help protect people - many at a particularly vulnerable point in their lives, having just lost a close family member, suffered a serious injury, or undergone a major property loss - and their assets.