Contact:
Lisa Lee, Vice President, Marketing
Clark Consulting
Phone: 509-465-0589
lisa.lee@clarkconsulting.com

According to Clark Consulting Survey: Retail Sector Sees Rising Use of Corporate-Owned Life Insurance (COLI) for Executive Benefits Funding

Dallas, May 21, 2008 - For fifteen years, Clark Consulting's Executive Benefits - A Survey of Current Trends has been tracking how Fortune 1000 companies shape their executive benefit programs. For the first time since the survey’s inception, Clark is offering a retail industry focus of the survey.

Top-line findings about what the retail industry is doing about funding executive benefit liabilities include:

• 94% have Nonqualified Deferred Compensation (NQDC) Plans
• Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans (SERPs) are on the rise, with 67% of retail companies reporting them
• 75% of retail companies fund NQDC plans using Corporate-Owned Life Insurance (COLI), up from 57% in 2005
• 100% of retail respondents fund SERPs with COLI.

To receive a full report of Clark Consulting's Executive Benefits - A Survey of Current Trends: 2007 Retail Industry Results, register online at www.clarkconsulting.com/retail.

About Clark Consulting, Inc.
Clark Consulting is an authoritative source of risk management and strategic financing solutions for inefficiently funded and unfunded liabilities that result from executive and employee benefit programs. Since 1967, Clark experts have designed thousands of benefit plans and administered billions in assets for leading American corporations and banks in their pursuit of financial goals.

Pragmatic and customized products and services offer multiple client solutions across a single platform that include placement of corporate- bank- and trust-owned life insurance (COLI/BOLI/TOLI), non-qualified deferred compensation plans, investment research and advisory services, and asset administrative services. For more information, visit www.clarkconsulting.com or www.409A.net or call (800) 999.3125.

Clark Consulting is a wholly owned subsidiary of AEGON USA, one of the world's largest life insurance and pension groups, and provider of investment products.

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Contact:
Shawn-Laree de St. Aubin
Dobbins Communications
847-332-2626 ext. 22
sl@dobbcomm.com