Rollover within plan from mutual fund family to insurance company? can

[Guest kmamka]

I have a 401(k) plan that uses american funds within the plan. We used to use met life and all the employees had contracts there. We kept our contracts with met life but started putting new money in american funds. I want to roll my funds that are in american funds to the met life contract. can I do this? The met life contract is a individual retirement annuity and the american funds money is mutual funds.

[Michael Devault]

The mere fact that you want to move money from a mutual fund to an annuity would not prohibit you from transferring the money. However, since the money in the 401(k) is "trusteed," or owned by the trust, the plan has to permit current investments in the annuities, or allow participants to use wide discretion in the investment choices for their accounts.

Check with your plan administrator on this matter. They will be able to provide you with guidance.

Good luck!

[Bill Berke]

Are you still employed? Are you over the NRA defined in your current plan? Does the plan permit NRA in-service distributions?To "rollover" you must have a distributable triggering event, which revolve around employment termination or attaining certain specified ages. I would doubt that your plan permits investing into a variable annuity while maintaining the American Funds as the choices. But, as Michael Devault said above, check with your plan administrator. Once you have incurred a distribution triggering event, you could then direct the trustee to pay your account balance(s) to the met life contract. Of course, we didn't get to why anyone would ever invest in annuity. But that's a different discussion. You may want to look at the SEC's web-site (SEC.gov) to see that agency's consumer alert regarding varable annuities. Or you could look at the LA Times website financial section for that newpaper's alerts regrarding variable life and variable annuity policies.