Other findings from the survey include:

• There is a significant gap between investors’ desire to generate guaranteed lifetime income and their understanding of best practices to do so. For example, while the top concern of clients age 50 or older is having enough income to retire on, advisors report that more than half (62 percent) of investors who could benefit from variable annuities don’t actually own them.

• Nearly a third (27 percent) of financial advisors say their clients age 50 and older are “not very knowledgeable” or “not knowledgeable at all” about variable annuities. (21 percent are: extremely knowledgeable, 52 percent are somewhat knowledgeable).

• Advisors believe investors would be more likely to invest in variable annuities if they had lower fees (43 percent), clients were more educated (38 percent), variable annuities were easier to understand (38 percent), or VAs were a more common investment (29 percent), among other reasons.

“It’s up to us in the retirement income planning field to show that guaranteed retirement income solutions are worth the money given the protection they help to provide against the risk of declining interest rates, the risk of a declining stock market, and the risk (if you’re are lucky enough to live a long life) of running out of money,” said Terry Mullen, president of Sun Life Financial Distributors in a statement. “Investors are paying us to provide them a guaranteed income stream for 30 or 40 years. That’s an important service, since for most Americans, gone are the days of defined benefit plans, where the employer provided guaranteed lifetime retirement income.”