Defined terms for the annuity market and lifetime income landscape.
GAAP versus statutory accounting is the structural comparison between the two parallel financial-reporting frameworks US insurance carriers operate under — GAAP for investors and statutory accounting for regulators — which produce materially different reported figures for the same business.
The gender mortality differential is the consistent empirical finding that women live longer than men in essentially all human populations, with the difference in the United States measured at approximately 5 years of life expectancy at birth as of 2024.
The general account is the pool of an insurer's assets that supports its non-separate-account liabilities — fixed annuities, immediate annuities, and the fixed components of variable annuities — with the contract owner holding a contractual claim against those assets rather than direct ownership.
