A New Platform Provides A Different Approach For Annuities
December 27, 2016 by Ben Mattlin
In mid-December, Global Atlantic Financial Group, a provider of a broad spectrum of insurance, annuities, and other retirement products, announced it would enter 2017 with what it dubbed an industry first: a truly unified distribution organization.
“This is the first unified distribution built solely around helping advisors meet their clients’ retirement needs with annuities,” says Paula Nelson, head of retirement distribution. “Global Atlantic is uniquely positioned to offer the approach given the breadth of its annuity platform, which includes fixed, fixed-index, variable and immediate/deferred income annuities, as well as a hybrid fixed annuity with long-term care benefits.”
By combining all products through a unified distribution force, the goal is to provide advisors a single point of contact. Product teams will join together to offer simplified access to the full range of annuities, with a variety of options to address individual customer requirements.
“This alignment simplifies interactions with advisors and facilitates a true partnership approach to deliver flexible strategies based on the clients’ needs,” says Nelson. Because it’s “not dependent on any one annuity product,” she adds, it will enable wholesalers to “better educate advisors on the variety of benefits different annuities offer.”
Global Atlantic, headquartered in New York, distributes annuities through national and regional firms, banks, and independent broker-dealers across the country. Founded in 2004 at Goldman Sachs, it’s been independent since 2013 and currently boasts more than $50 billion in assets.
Its new distribution approach will include Global Atlantic’s complete annuity platform, which is different from the traditional method of leading with a single product and then adapting it to fit a specific client. Advisors can first determine an appropriate retirement strategy based on a client’s objectives; then they can learn about the range of products that might be most appropriate.
Although Global Atlantic insists it didn’t design the strategy specifically in reaction to the DOL regs, it will fit in nicely with the new fiduciary ruling. “While our approach aligns well with the DOL fiduciary standard, the approach is driven by the company’s long-term strategic direction, not the regulation,” says Nelson.
Global Atlantic aims to show how different annuities can help meet a range of retirement goals. Advisors are invited — even encouraged — to learn along the way. The success of the platform will be measured, in part, through “the growth of advisors and firms doing business with us across multiple annuity types,” she says.
Are other firms likely to follow? Nelson thinks not. She maintains that Global Atlantic is leading the way as the industry adapts to a changing environment, but she insists it is particularly well positioned “to execute on this strategy,” she says, because of its “broad product offering to support it.”
The platform goes into effect at the start of the new year. Nelson is confident it will be a triumph. “This alignment simplifies interactions with advisors and facilitates a true partnership approach to deliver flexible strategies based on the clients’ needs,” she says.
