RJ and Makay

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A new quarterly survey released Monday by Northern Trust indicates that risk managers were more risk averse in the second quarter of 2011, yet almost three-quarters of survey recipients are optimistic about job growth and over half expect short-term corporate earnings growth.  42% of managers said they were more risk averse in Q2 than they were in Q1 2011, when 36% of managers said they were more risk averse than in the previous quarter.

In the past two months, investors’ confidence in their outlook for global growth and corporate profits substantially slipped, according to a May Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey of global fund managers.

The proportion of respondents who believe the world economy would be strengthening in the next 12 months fell to a net 10%, down from 27% in April and 58% as recently as February. Only 9% of respondents are expecting corporate profits to improve in the coming year.

Thanks to surging equities and greater demand for guaranteed income riders, variable annuity (VA) sales jumped 10% last year to $140.5 billion — their highest level in two years. Annuity sales dropped 7% overall last year, though, mainly because of a weak market for fixed annuities, reports financial services research and consulting firm LIMRA.

“We attribute the growth [in VA sales] to increased confidence in the VA market by consumers, advisors, and the companies themselves,” says Joseph Montminy, assistant vice president of annuity research at LIMRA. “We saw growth in almost two-thirds of the VA industry in 2010.”