“They’re trying to make this block of business more attractive to a buyer, and less valuable to a contract owner,” Downer said.
According to Joyce, Hartford offered guarantees on the Leaders annuities that made the business a sandbag on its other operations. Since abandoning the business, it has attempted to offer contract holders inducements to surrender their variable annuities, with some success.
Downer and Joyce claim that Hartford's current proposal, made public in an SEC filing, is being kept quiet by the company.
While Raymond James and Hartford have communicated about the matter on the home office level, Stolz says it is difficult to get information to advisors and consumers.
"As soon as the SEC approves this, we'll have to reach out to our advisors," Stolz says. "The dilemma, though, is that if we're asked by our advisors or our clients about what to do with this, given the fact that these funds have no track record, we can't tell them what to do."
Downer claims that Hartford is putting its shareholders ahead of its contract holders, and the conflict between serving clients and shareholders is tamping down opposition to the move.
“It’s difficult to create controversy if you’re a public company; we’re not, we had the opportunity here to fight for principle,” Downer says. “There’s no question that we have some self-interest here; $8 billion is a lot of money, but our gross 2016 inflows were about $185 billion. We’re not motivated to do this out of a desperation to preserve assets.”