Defined terms for the annuity market and lifetime income landscape.
Broker-dealer regulation is the federal and self-regulatory framework governing firms and individuals that effect securities transactions for the account of others (brokers) or for their own account (dealers), administered principally by the SEC and FINRA.
A brokerage window is a feature of some defined contribution plans that permits participants to invest a portion of their account outside the plan's core investment menu through a self-directed brokerage account, which provides access to a broader universe of investment options than the core menu.
Bucket strategy is a retirement income approach that segments savings into time-horizon-based portions — a near-term cash bucket, a middle bucket in intermediate bonds, and a long-term bucket in growth assets — with withdrawals from the shortest bucket and refills from the longer ones.
A buffer, in the registered index-linked annuity context, is a contractually defined amount of negative index return that the carrier absorbs before any loss is passed to the contract owner, typically expressed as a percentage of the index decline over a crediting period.
