Salt Financial and Nasdaq Announce Collaboration

Salt Financial and Nasdaq today announced the introduction of the Nasdaq-100 5% Target Volatility Index, which will provide insurance companies and their clients a new way to access components of the Nasdaq-100 Index for their fixed indexed annuities in a format that aims for stability in volatile markets. The index was created utilizing Salt Financial’s proprietary truVol Risk Control Engine (RCE) and is the first in a projected series of new products Nasdaq and Salt Financial will develop tailored for the insurance carriers.

Today’s lower interest rate environment presents unique challenges for insurance companies in offering attractive crediting strategies for their fixed indexed annuity products. The suite of indexes to be developed by Nasdaq and Salt Financial will provide insurance companies with new volatility-controlled strategies leveraging popular Nasdaq indexes and powered by Salt’s next-generation risk control mechanism.

The truVol Risk Control Engine (RCE) is a powerful, patent-pending risk management toolkit designed to target volatility in risk-controlled index strategies. The use of historical intraday data in truVol can help increase targeting accuracy and responsiveness, aiming to improve product participation rates and outcomes for annuitants.

“Our close, collaborative approach complements and enhances our partners’ ability to deliver a powerful solution for clients in a challenging market environment,” said Tony Barchetto, founder and CEO, Salt Financial. “We are proud to contribute our truVol technology to this globally recognized index to help target volatility more efficiently than traditional risk-control mechanisms.”

“Since its inception over 35 years ago, the Nasdaq-100 index has become one of the most liquid index ecosystems supporting a wide range of investment products containing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets globally,” said Cameron Lilja, Vice President, Global Head of Index Product at Nasdaq. “We’re excited to be working with Salt Financial on this innovative suite of risk-managed indexes for the fixed indexed annuities marketplace, providing insurance carriers and their clients a new way to gain exposure to Nasdaq-100 companies.”