Get Confidence in Life, Get an Allianz Annuity

If you are considering getting annuity plan from Allianz, it is important to get to the bottom of it—know the company and the annuity services that they offer and how it can benefit you.

Based in Minneapolis, Allianz was founded in 1896. It is a part of the mother company Allianz SE, which is a global financial institution. The full subsidiary company name is Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America. They provide life insurance policies, fixed and variable annuities, and long term care insurance products in the United States.

Allianz' performance, innovation and customer service made them one of the leading life insurance companies in North America. As a proof to Allianz' success, they even ranked 5th on Forbes Global 2000 list of the world's largest corporation and this is based from the assets, sales, profits, and market value information of the company last March 2007.

One of the prides of Allianz is its annuities policies. They offer the two major types: fixed annuities and variable annuities. In a fixed Allianz annuity, the contract is to make periodic payments and in return, the policy holder will get a premium.

The following are the main benefits of a fixed Allianz annuity:

Interest rate guarantees - This means that your annuity contract includes the protection that the interests that will apply on your policy will never fall under the minimum guaranteed rate.
Tax-deferred accumulation - Taxes do not apply on the policy until the time of withdrawal. The taxes are usually treated the same way your income will be and is dependent on your tax bracket.
Guarantees to principal - Another annuity policy which serves as a protection against loss.
Death benefit protection - In the untoward event of death before the annuity payments has started, the maturity of the investment will be passed on to the specified beneficiary or heir. Take note that Allianz is actually one of the few companies which offer this kind attractive feature.
Guaranteed retirement income - Once the specified timeframe for the investment maturation has been fulfilled, then you can also start on taking out regular annuity payments, making it sure that you will never ran out of income even upon retirement.

If it is a variable Allianz annuity that you are interested, it is available under the label of the following: Allianz VisionSM, Allianz High Five™, Allianz ConnectionsSM, Allianz High Five™ Bonus, Allianz High Five™ L, Allianz EliteSM, Allianz Alterity™, and Allianz Rewards™. Variable alliance annuity allows you to have access to over 50 investment options from more than 10 highly respected and world class money managers or financial consultants. Such variable annuities from Allianz come with a guarantee that your investments are protected, even during various market conditions.

Aside from the usual feature of tax-deferred phases of the investments, here are more of the unique main feature benefits of variable annuities:

Alternative or additional income aside from Social Security benefits
Assists in market growth by offsetting inflation
Death benefit protection
Freedom to choose from a wide variety of investment options (e.g. bonds, stocks, and money market options)