If you’re utilizing annuities in your client’s strategy process, it’s hard not to get caught up in the marketing “bells and whistles” that bombard your email inbox and voicemail every day.

Coincidentally, these are the same bells and whistles that some people use to argue that fixed indexed annuities (FIAs) are too good to be true and are full of smoke and mirrors.  If it were true that indices were offering uncapped exposure to the market with no downside risk and that income benefits and guarantees can be in the double digits, then what’s not to love?