The annuity industry ended last year on “strong and secure footing,” where variable annuity assets reached an all-time high and fourth quarter sales showed the highest levels of last year, a report showed.

A Rosemount, Minn., man was fined $10,000 and suspended by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for three months after he helped a relative to improperly sell a fixed and variable annuity.

Fluctuations in returns for other financial instruments paid off for indexed annuity sales, which set a record with quarterly sales of $8.7 million.

The Dutch parent company of Transamerica Corp. says this month it will repay 500 million euros ($643 million) of the aid it received from that government in 2008.

The life insurance industry’s outlook has been restored at “stable,” after being downgraded to “negative” in October 2008, when the financial markets began to tumble, according to Moody’s Investors Services.

A registered financial representative from Martinez, Ga., was barred by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) after he improperly took money from a client’s variable annuity.

The Jackson National Life Insurance Co. set a company record for monthly variable annuity sales in March, logging more than $1.3 billion.

The U.S. insurance industry raised $38.6 billion in capital from the first quarter of last year through the first quarter of this year, with most of the capital raised in the second quarter of 2009, according to Fitch Ratings’ Insurance group.

So busy were individual annuity insurers at raising capital and increasing premium that they may need to take a new look at the products they are offering.

A national life insurance settlement association has come out in opposition to the practice of stranger-originated annuity transactions, or STATs.