In December, we announced a partnership with Nationwide to distribute their advisory annuity and VUL solution on the RetireOne platform. It’s an exciting development that allows us to offer up top-tier Nationwide advisory solutions to our advisors, as well as marry their insurance offerings to our risk-off capabilities. In the words of our own Chief Distribution Officer:
“Americans deserve peace of mind in retirement without worry that they will run out of money or that they may need to return to the workforce,” said Jeff Cusack, CIMA, Chief Distribution Officer at RetireOne. “We’re proud to partner with Nationwide to empower financial advisors with solutions that will protect their clients from the risks posed by market volatility, inflation and longevity.”
It didn’t take the media long to get wind of the deal, and to pick up the ball and run with it. Several outlets ran the press release, or reported from it, and ThinkAdvisor expanded on Jeff’s quote:
Cusack says RetireOne’s approach enables fee-based advisors to transfer certain risks from clients to insurance providers and to transfer transactional risk from their firms to RetireOne and EF Legacy Securities. Critically, Cusack says, advisors without insurance licenses can partner with RetireOne to access a marketplace of zero-commission insurance and annuity solutions designed to fit the needs of the end client.
Meanwhile, PLANADVISOR interviewed our Chief Marketing Officer, Mark Forman, to gather some additional context on why such a partnership is important:
“What we’re seeing is that after 10 years of an extraordinary bull market, when markets get volatile, inflation hits record marks that we haven’t seen in years, and we have a rising interest rate environment that has made bonds weak—RIAs are looking at fixed income options and fixed annuities,” Forman says.
The article goes on to explain that much of the industry stigma within the industry evaporates when annuities are advertised as what they are: protection. PLANADVISOR also takes the opportunity to cite our 2022 PARI Survey:
Forman of RetireOne points to its research showing that RIAs are much more interested in retirement income after the volatility of this year. His firm’s data showed that in 2021, 26% of RIAs were on the fence about offering annuities, a figure that dropped to 14% in 2022.
Nationwide is on your side, and so are we!
