From insurance to investments: financialisation and the supply side of life insurance and annuities in the USA (1970–2006)

The paper describes the supply side of the annuity products and hybrid investment/life insurance policies that were developed and sold by US life insurers from the 1970s onward, including some of the investments that financed them, including commercial mortgages and commercial mortgage-backed securities. Links to different understandings of financialisation are made, as is an argument for embracing the multiple meanings of the term. This approach enables researchers to understand how different forms of financialisation are linked. In the case of life insurers, it shows how their corporate strategy shifted out of necessity, even when those changes were likely to be less profitable. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.