Could a collective trust fund of a bank hold individual group annuity contracts for seperate employer groups? Essentially pooling several group annuity contracts under one collective trust fund. thanks

I seem to recall reading an SEC No-Action letter that described a bank that had such an arrangement.

The no-action letter sounds like the SEC review the investment and felt it was ok? Not sure why a collective trust fund could not have this as an underlying investment but thought I would send this out to see if anyone is familar with this arrangement. Do you remember where you saw the no action letter?

It was in the CCH Federal Securities Law Reporter listing of no-action letters.

Chances are good that it was very old, because most of the no-action letters on these types of investments are between 5 and 25 years old.

SEC staff No-action letters can be found here, but there is not much history.
http://www.sec.gov/interps.shtml

As Kirk notes, CCH or BNA research services are the most likely source of older documents. When I searched BNA for "group annuity contract bank", I got 21 hits.

BTW, the original post stated "individual group annuity contracts". Terminology seems awkward. I presume it refers to "more than one" GA contract.

you are righ Pax...my wording was awkward but that is what I was referring to...more than one GA contract under a collective trust fund.

I got 211 hits on RIA's Checkpoint, including six No-Action Letters dated 1991 to 2003, for the same search. The 8/10 1998 letter to Mass Mutual tends to read as if this would be okay..
They are:
SEC No-Action: Lincoln National Life Insurance and Lincoln Financial Advisors--January 30, 2003
SEC No-Action: Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company--August 10, 1998
SEC No-Action: State Street Bank & Trust Company--August 1, 1996
SEC No-Action: Mutual of America Life Insurance Co.--June 17, 1993
SEC No-Action: Zenith Electronics Corp.--May 28, 1993
SEC No-Action: Zenith Electronics Corp.--February 4, 1991

I think the bank can hold in a common collective trust the different group annuity contracts. The DOL has issued several opinions that are flexible enough to allow it.
Opinion 94-31A is one and 96-23A says: "when a plan indirectly retains investments services by investing in a pooled investment vehicle, the assets of the vehicle should be viewed as plan assets and managed assets.......the same result would occur without using the vehicle of the trust. REgulation 2510.3-101(g) provides that: where plan assets are held jointly with others, the plans identifiable property shall be treated as the sole property of the separate entity."

The key element is the sub-accounting to cleary identify who has what.

Also PTCE 84-24 is also applicable.