Pensions may be going the way of the dinosaurs, but retirement savers can increasingly find another product in their plans that serves a similar purpose: annuities.

Fidelity Investments is adding an offering in early 2027 that will give investors access to a target-date fund with an embedded annuity via Nationwide and New York Life. The new suite of collective investment trusts, called Freedom Lifetime, will add another layer to traditional strategies by converting a portion of an employee’s target-date balance into guaranteed lifetime income. The move follows similar announcements from Vanguard, which teamed up with TIAA to offer a similar product in December. BlackRock’s LifePath Paycheck, which launched in 2024, also offers retirees guaranteed income via annuities.

Vanguard and Fidelity following BlackRock is a sign that there’s a ton of demand for this type of product, said Jason Kephart, a senior principal at Morningstar. But savers trying to navigate these new offerings will likely require significant input from advisors. “The challenge with these strategies is the education part, and making sure that the participants really understand what the options are,” Kephart added.

Advisors’ Roles

For the many retirees worried that their retirement savings and Social Security won’t be enough for the decades to come, annuities can help fill gaps by turning savings into a steady stream of income. Historically, savers could get guaranteed income through pensions, or by venturing into the retail annuity market, but that’s full of confusing language, costly products and commission-based sales.

“Introducing lifetime income solutions in 401(k) plans, especially in default investments like target-date funds, gives participants an ‘easy button’ when it comes to generating lifetime income,” said David Blanchett, head of retirement research at Prudential Financial. Still, he said, “advisors need to get more knowledgeable on these types of solutions more generally. The lifetime income space has evolved significantly over the last few years, and will likely continue doing so.”

More than a dozen target-date series come with guaranteed income nowadays, and they all do so in their own way, which makes it tough to compare them and select the best, Kephart said. A useful starting point is understanding the two types of annuities the products are using:

• BlackRock, Vanguard and the new Fidelity offering use versions of income annuities in which savers give up a portion of their paychecks for cash flows later. The downsides are that the funds typically can’t be accessed once they’re converted, they lose purchasing power due to inflation, and the costs can be challenging to evaluate, Kephart wrote in a recent report.
• Guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits, used by J.P. Morgan and AllianceBernstein, offer more flexibility, but they can come with high fees, conservative withdrawal rates compared with traditional income annuities, and the possibility of participants accidentally withdrawing too much and lowering their guarantees.

Feels Personal. “The decision to annuitize is such a personal one that it really depends on your own risk tolerance and expected retirement spending,” Kephart said. “It’s definitely not for everyone, and I think an advisor being able to help [clients] understand if it’s right for them would be the key.”

If you’re selling, they’re buying.

Mergers and acquisitions are a cornerstone in plenty of RIAs’ growth strategies, and the buying mindset is becoming inescapable. More than half of RIAs, some 54%, are currently seeking an acquisition, according to a Cerulli report. That share has increased as a wave of advisor retirements, coupled with succession challenges, continues to create new M&A opportunities now worth more than $2.5 trillion. “Internal succession is pretty hard for RIAs, especially when you get into billions of dollars in AUM,” said Stephen Caruso, Cerulli associate director. “Valuations are so high right now. Oftentimes you look for an acquirer who has the resources and career pathing for your team, so your team is taken care of as part of this deal-making process.”

Big Fish, Massive Pond

Like wealth itself, assets in the advisory industry remain highly concentrated. Just 2% of RIAs, those with more than $5 billion in AUM, control more than half of all RIA assets. “The large continue to get larger,” Caruso told Advisor Upside, citing firms like Hightower, Corient and Wealth Enhancement Group. During the next decade, Cerulli projects more than 26,000 acquisitions in the RIA industry. The biggest firms with the deepest pockets will have the most opportunities, but Caruso noted mergers up and down the AUM spectrum. “That’s something we see playing out in the long term,” he said. “Just because M&A is becoming more active in this space, doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for smaller deals as well.”

The report found that between 2022 and 2024:

• Cresset purchased six RIAs with average total assets of $7.35 billion
• Corient acquired 20 firms averaging $1.4 billion in assets.
• Wealth Enhancement purchased 47 firms with about $400 million in assets apiece.
• Wealth Partners Capital Group bought 85 RIAs averaging roughly $245 million in assets.

Niche to See You. Meanwhile, smaller RIAs are realizing they have to become more specialized or compete differently, Caruso said. “Smaller firms have the benefit of affecting faster asset growth or asset acquisition, but it still relates to how you compete in your local area,” he said. “Your average RIA on Main Street is competing against the Edward Jones advisor five blocks down, and they’re competing against the other small RIA three streets over.”

You don’t have to be a lawyer to know that it sometimes pays to settle.

Life insurance settlements allow clients to sell their policies in exchange for an upfront lump sum of money. The insured can solicit bids on their policies from institutional buyers, who analyze factors like age, health and policy premiums to submit competing offers. The sale provides the policy owner with a potentially significant cash advance, while the third party becomes the new owner of the policy, pays the monthly premiums, and receives the full benefit of the policy when the insured dies.

Settlement is a potentially high-value option for people facing very difficult situations (often financial hardship or a terminal illness), yet the strategy remains relatively niche in practice, with Life Insurance Settlement Association data showing some 15,000 policies were settled between 2021 and 2025. That’s just scratching the surface, according to Bryan Nicholson, executive director of LISA, since awareness of life settlements remains relatively low.

“We could easily see double that amount of policies being settled on an annual basis in the future,” Nicholson told Advisor Upside. “This isn’t for everybody, but it should be a tool in the advisor’s toolkit.”

The Settlement Landscape

As retirement costs rise and financial priorities evolve, more consumers are looking closely at the assets they already own, evaluating how those assets fit into their broader financial plan. When a permanent life insurance policy with cash value no longer fits the bill, consumers’ options include taking a withdrawal from the policy. This can even be done tax-free if it’s less than the amount paid into the policy, but the death benefit will probably be reduced. Clients can also typically borrow money against their policy, with non-repaid loans typically being deducted from their death benefit. And, of course, they can surrender the policy or even let it lapse outright.

For many permanent life insurance policyholders, the secondary market can open the door to better outcomes. Compared with other options, Nicholson said, settlement is particularly attractive in 2026:

• The average cash surrender value offered by insurers, or the money the policyholder receives after cancelling the plan, declined 27% year-over-year, falling from $33,493 in 2024 to just $24,360 in 2025.
• Participants in the settlement market, conversely, received nearly nine times the cash surrender value ($212,066 on average), up from just under seven times in 2024.
• That represents about $555 million more being returned to policyholders than they would have received by surrendering.

Key Considerations. Settlement is usually available for policyholders aged 65 or older who have unwanted coverage, unaffordable premiums, changing estate needs or medical expenses. Unlike standard death benefits, life settlement payouts are generally subject to income taxes. Likewise, beneficiaries will permanently lose the right to the policy’s death benefit, and though the payout is higher than the surrender value, it can still be considerably lower than the total death benefit.