Cite as: 510 U. S. 86 (1993)
Thomas, J., dissenting
by its gloss on the guaranteed benefit exception as a provision demanding an "examination of risk allocation in each component" of the policy. See ante, at 102. But Congress nowhere mentioned allocation of risk, fixed payouts, or guaranteed investment returns in the statute, despite the obvious superiority of those terms in conveying the meaning the Court ascribes to the text. Instead, Congress directed our attention to the provision of guaranteed benefits—that is, to the type of payments the policy provides to individual participants.
The Court derives its gloss on the guaranteed benefit policy exception from extratextual sources that lead it to a reading divorced from the statute's language. First, the Court begins its analysis not with an examination of the terms of § 401(b)(2), but with a discussion of cases decided under the Securities Act of 1933, 48 Stat. 74, as amended. For example, the Court looks to a case in which we addressed whether a variable annuity was an "investment contract" covered by § 2 of the Securities Act, 15 U. S. C. § 77b, or an "insurance or endowment policy or annuity contract or optional annuity contract" exempted by § 3 of that Act, 15 U. S. C. § 77c(a)(8). See SEC v. United Benefit Life Ins. Co., 387 U. S. 202, 204- 205, 211 (1967). Were it disputed that GAC 50 is an "insurance policy or contract," it might be useful to consider how this Court has defined an insurance policy under federal securities law and the extent to which GAC 50 meets that test. Here, however, no one denies that GAC 50 is an insurance policy. If it were not, § 401(b)(2) would not apply at all. Because GAC 50 is concededly an insurance policy, its allocation of risk is irrelevant to the distinct inquiry demanded by the statute into the provision of guaranteed benefits.
guaranteed benefits (through the purchase, for example, of fixed annuities) must be invested at a guaranteed return and converted to guaranteed benefits at a rate fixed by contract. Ante, at 106.
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