Annuities for Widows
DESPITE the increase in the prices of annuities in recent years and the drop in security values in the past two years, making the exchange of investments for annuities slightly less attrac- tive, the figures of those offices which have been bold enough to cater for annuity business show that many people arc still willing to purchase certainty of income on a higher scale in place of investments of fluctuating values. Last year the Equity and Law Life Assurance Society, Legal and General Assurance and Friends' Provident all took more than Lr,000,000 in payment for immediate annuities.
Those who sold investments when prices were high and bought annuities with the money have every reason to be satisfied with their bargain. They have avoided depreciation of capital and made sure of a larger income for themselves for the term of their own lives, or, if they have bought joint- life annuities on the lives of themselves and their wives, they have ensured the maintenance of that income to their widows, should their wives survive them.
Under special plans, annuities may be effected on the basis that the payments will continue for a fixed term, or for such a period as will represent the return of the whole of the pur- chase money, so that there is no risk of loss of a large part of the purchase price in the event of early death.
FILLING A GAP IN PENSIONS.
There is one form of annuity that doubtless would be in larger demand were its merits better known. This is the deferred annuity, purchasable by annual premiums and pay- able for the remainder of the life of an individual should another individual die first. That is to say, a man who can look forward on retirement to an adequate pension may safe- guard his wife, should he die either before or after he has entered upon his own pension.
There are many employments, such as civil servants, schoolmasters and company officials in which salary-earners are protected as regards their own superannuation, but their wives are unprotected. Should the salary-earner or pen- sioner die, his widow may have nothing at all. It is not an expensive matter to pay an annual premium to provide for annuity to the widow payable only if the husband should die, and as the husband, thanks to his pension rights, has less need of insurance than some other people, since his superannuation is already provided, he is well able to pay the moderate annual premium required to cover the gap between his own pension and the possibility that he may leave a widow who will not otherwise be provided for.
AcruAaws.
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