The Allianz Company

Frequently mispelled Alliance, Allianz annuities are offered by the famous Minneapolis-based Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America - usually abbreviated to "Allianz Life". Their main products are annuities and other types of life insurance financial products, which are offerred in every state except for New York. Instead, the Allianz Life Insurance Company of New York is responsible for selling annuities in that state.

As with the major life insurance company MetLife, they sell different types of financial products, including the mainstays fixed and variable annuities. The salesforce consists of a group of more than 100,000 professionals who work in the personal finance sector around the country.

The German Company Allianz

The American company is actually a subsidiary, or child company, or the German company Allianz SE, a world-wide financial service firm that is amongst one of the world's 20 largest by revenue. The number of employees is in excess of 150,000 spread across the globe. People who are interested in working for them should check out their LinkedIn page at http://www.linkedin.com/company/allianz-life, which shows recent hires as well as its current activity in the hiring market.

Allianz Guarantees

Like the rest of the industry, the guarantees of Allianz are not protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the semi-governmental organization that bails out failed banks and credit unions. Instead, all the guarantees are backed by the company itself. Similarly, for equity-based products like annuities that depend on the fortunes of the stock market, there is no guarantee of performance. Analogously, in New York, the guarantees are backed by Allianz Life Insurance Company of New York.

History And Merger

The company has its roots in two parts of the world. First, Henry Little of Minneapolis started up a company known as North American Casualty in the early 1890s. In 1896, it merged with North American Life Association, and in turn this became North American Life and Casualty. However, in 1979 this company was bought out by Allianz AG of Germany. This firm, coincidentally, also got its start in the 1890s. The renaming of the company to Allianz Life Insurance Company happened in 1993.

Allianz Ratings

It is always prudent to check what ratings agencies like Standard & Poors or Moody's has to say about financial companies which provide guarantees. The ratings were rated investment quality as of late 2009. For example, Standard & Poors rated it AA or very strong. A triple A (AAA) rating is the top.

Terms Of Variable Annuities Vary Across The Country

If you are interested in getting an account, be aware that they list on their own website that the product or feature availability will differ from state to state. Furthermore, variable annuities have terms that differ from broker to broker.

Focus On Women's Financial Concerns

The company also carried out a study in 2006 that targeted how women regarded their money. According to the results of the research, women use the internet as the number one resource for learning about financial matters, but also trusted it the least. It was concluded that women tended to prefer "human interaction" as the biggest factor in making decisions.

The Basics Of Annuities

Recently Allianz has commissioned a series of videos called the ABCS of Annuities aimed at educating the average retiree about annuities. An execute, Libbe, said that survey results found that most people have dislike the word 'annuity', and were confused by the idea. The goal of education ostensibly has the ancillary benefit of enlarging their market of course. One possibility is a rebranding of the word annuity to give it a more modern edge.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement of products offered by Allianz Life.