209 - Crossing MYGAs and FIAs With Bobby Samuelson

That Annuity Show

Summary

In this episode of That Annuity Show, Bobby Samuelson, President of Life Innovators, discusses the current state of the annuity market and the challenges and opportunities it presents. He highlights the entry of new companies into the market and the different strategies they employ. Bobby also discusses the role of proprietary indices in annuities and the need for innovation in product development. He emphasizes the importance of technology in enabling advisors to tell the annuity story more effectively. Overall, Bobby provides insights into the changing dynamics of the annuity market and the evolving expectations of customers.

Takeaways

• New companies are entering the annuity market, with many focusing on multi-year guarantee annuities (MYGAs) as an entry point.
• The annuity market is highly competitive, and companies need to differentiate themselves through innovation in product development.
• Proprietary indices have played a significant role in the annuity market, but there is a need for more innovation and a focus on the underlying product structure.
• The annuity market faces challenges in attracting and retaining customers, and companies need to adapt to changing customer expectations and preferences.
• Technology can play a crucial role in enabling advisors to sell annuities more effectively and reach new markets.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Focus of Bobby Samuelson 03:45 New Entrants in the Annuity Market 07:43 Competition and Innovation in the Annuity Market 13:42 The Role of Proprietary Indices in Annuities 20:31 Challenges and Opportunities in the Annuity Market 27:12 Changing Customer Expectations in the Annuity Market 30:44 The Role of Technology in the Annuity Market 35:37 Conclusion and Closing Remarks

Paul Tyler (00:03.644) Hi, this is Paul Tyler and welcome to another episode of That Annuity Show. Tisa, good to see you.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (00:09.89) Good to see you, Paul. Good morning, everyone.

Paul Tyler (00:11.708) Yeah, we're having a lot of fun at work these days.

Paul Tyler (00:29.411) Ramsey Atlanta is like, I don't want to know. I'm not sure I want to know what Atlanta is like.

Ramsey Smith (00:32.292) It's sunny. It's chilly, but it is bright sunny day. Can't complain.

Paul Tyler (00:36.464) Okay. All right. Bobby, hey, listen, first of all, thanks for coming back. It's always good, you know, when guests, we have guests on once and they say yes to coming back. It's been a couple years, but we are lucky and fortunate to have Bobby Samuelson, President of Life Innovators, on our show. And Bobby, hey, just tell, it brings up the speed, you know, tell us, you know, what's your focus these days?

Bobby (00:36.797) Same in Charlotte.

Bobby (00:50.781) See you back.

Bobby (01:02.789) Yeah, sure. So I've been doing, um, obviously worked at midlife Bright House for a few years. Less than 2017 started up a newsletter that I actually had done prior to going to Bright House. So I still do that called the life product review. That's, you know, three to 4,000 words every week on what's going on in the life insurance side of the world. Um, and then we also started up an annuity product development company. And so basically we serve as an outsourced chief product officer to small and midsize insurance companies. And so a lot of these newer entrants getting into the space.

can't hire product talent, can't find product talent. And so they use us as their chief product officer effectively. And then we've also picked up, I'd say a few kind of insurance companies that are either doing other types of products and want to get into annuities or maybe are already doing annuities, but haven't done for example, an FIA or a RYLA or even a VA and they hire us to help them build those products. And then along the way with that, we kind of realized that wait a second, we're doing, you know the life product review, can we do something?

on kind of what's going on in the competitive landscape on the annuity side of the world. And so we started a newsletter called the annuity edge. And that is basically a weekly digest of, you know, everything going on in the competitive side of the annuity world. And so we, we scan, we look at all the filings that come through the States and the compact, we look at all the stuff that comes through competitive scan. We look at stuff that comes through, you know, the various rate providers, plus the conversations we have with carriers. And we basically write all that up and sort of a, a narrative kind of format to try to tell the story of.

What's going on every week in annuities. And, you know, look, we've had, we've had plenty to write about. Like there's tons of stuff having, it feels like every week there's something going on. New products, significant rate changes. We usually do like a market update every week because the rates have been changing so much. We also run every week a weekly index spotlight. So we go on and take, you know, there's 180, uh, engineered indexes. That's what we call them engineered indexes in the market. We take one every week and sort of dissect it. Talk about.

why it worked well over a certain period of time, why it probably didn't work well in 2022, how it looks like the index is calibrated kind of going forward, and try to again, kind of tell the story. And so in our view, there's so many places in annuities where you can get rates, and there's places where you can get, you know, flyers, and there's places where you can get kind of raw materials, but our job is to craft all that into a story so that people can sort of digest it. And so we got six people on the Life Innovators team, we all kind of chip in different.

Bobby (03:22.221) sections of the annuity edge. So I'd say most of what we've been working on these days, besides just product development, it's just cranking out that annuity edge, two or 3000 words every week on what's going on in the, in the, in the annuity market. And it's been, like I said, no shortage of things to write about. In fact, Nassau is going to be featured in next week's edition. The new income writer you guys released. Yes, we were just ripping it apart yesterday and we're going to write a little bit. So I'll probably, I'll send you a little draft before you, before we release that. So.

Paul Tyler (03:45.44) Good.

Paul Tyler (03:49.672) Oh, oh, tremendous. Well, yeah, first of all, thank you. And we, you know, we talk a little bit about the launch and kind of where this is headed. I'll lead off because wow, are there a lot of threads to pull in what you just talked about, but let's sort of talk about MyGa's new entrance. Like if I just stuck there, you know, and kind of look back at 2023.

Man, do we have a lot of new entrants coming in here. I think, no, I think my guess, and it's not just about my guess, I think this was an easy entry point for new companies. You think we're going to see new names, a lot of new names this year, or will we see those new names now expanding into the FIA space?

Bobby (04:15.31) Oh yeah.

Bobby (04:31.973) Yeah, both. Um, you know, when we talk to companies that are not in our business, that are looking to get in our business, I'd say there's, you know, two or three different playbooks that they're all kind of executing on. Some of them are, are more asset oriented. Some are more operational oriented. They actually really want to run an insurance company. They like the insurance company economics, which, which makes sense to others are more liability oriented, they're trying to figure out, okay, if I take these assets on, for example, you know, longevity, mortality, morbidity, sort of the health.

metrics side of the world, or even interest rate risk. Um, maybe they think they can do better with it. And so every, every new entrance has sort of a different angle on, on what they want to do in the insurance space. But for most of these companies, MYGAs is sort of seen as the natural entry point. And it's just such a commoditized market. If you come in with a hot rate, no one's going to, you know, people don't need to have like a 30 year relationship with an insurance company to sell a MYGAs product. You can kind of get in, sell a MYGAs, um, you know, call it a day. And so I think that's, that's.

Ramsey Smith (05:26.348) Hmm.

Bobby (05:30.481) the appeal of the market. I think it's also the danger of the market because it is so commoditized. So some of these companies have a hot rate and then all of a sudden it can flip to the other direction. And they end up kind of feeling the case usurped by other companies that get in the space. And so every company doesn't say most companies don't view my guy as their permanent strategy. They view it to your point as sort of like, get in, get the new business operations and tech kind of get the skids greased on that. And then once we get the get, get our

Business sorted out, then we can start to pivot over to the real prize, which is, which is FIA and there's a variety of reasons why companies view that as the real prize. Uh, that pivot is really, really hard. So the joke that I make to insurance companies when they ask me about sort of how long do we need to wait until we go sell FIA, I said, well, listen, let me give you an example. So I can go out to this track in the school across the street from my house and I can, and I can run a 400. Okay. And you can run a 402. Okay. Neither of us are going to be in the Olympics.

So even though we're doing the same activity as Olympians, we're not doing it to the same degree. So if you want to make the jump from my get an FAA, that's like you go into the track, my gets going to the track and running a pretty quick lab, selling up, you know, $8 billion a year of FIA is like being in the Olympics. And so every company comes in and says, Oh, well, we'll just going to do some my, and then we're going to sell a billion dollars of FAA. And it's like, yeah, that's like literally me going to the track and then trying out for the Olympics. Like that is a much harder, longer process.

You know, then people think, so I think there is a little bit of realism now in the market on how hard it is to make that pivot from my God to FIA. That being said, when we get calls every week or an hour week, every month from some company that's either not in this business or it's kind of parallel ancillary to this business, looking to get into the space, buying a shell company, you know, buying one of the many companies that are on the block right now. And so I do think we will see more entrance getting in. Um, and I think that's generally a good thing. I mean, annuities are.

Effectively a financial product. So more companies in more competitive rates, more competitive environments, probably pretty good for customers. Is it going to be great for all these companies and their own economics? That's to some degree a separate question. Like I think, I think the jury is still out on whether or not it's this playbook can be repeated over and over and over again, but, but there are plenty of companies out there trying to give it a shot and I think, I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.

Ramsey Smith (07:43.616) So let me ask you this, and I've had the similar observation. I mean, my view is that the annuity market, MYGAs and FIAs, it's a pretty established market. It's very competitive. Leadership in the market sort of rotates as different companies decide they really wanna focus on it. So in some ways, it's a vibrant market, especially in the last couple of years, but it's, I guess, in sort of blue ocean, red ocean terms.

Bobby (08:13.281) Yeah, it's red. Yeah.

Ramsey Smith (08:13.32) Right? It's a place where there's already a lot of people. Yeah, it's very red. So I've been surprised as I talked to sort of aspirational players, I've been surprised at how many of them want to jump into this space. And I'm just wondering why you think that is, why they aren't looking for greener pastures.

Bobby (08:33.957) think there's an established playbook, honestly set down by a theme that this can work. And by the way, I think NASAL is becoming another kind of proof point of if you stick with it long enough and you kind of are consistent enough, you can build a real franchise, you know, in this space, even though to your point, Ramsey, it's total red ocean. And so what I hear a lot of times, and this is kind of a joke, but it's not really a joke, is every time we talk to one of these guys and maybe you have the same experience.

Ramsey Smith (08:44.405) Yeah.

Bobby (09:00.945) They all say, well, yeah, but we do a great job managing assets. We're kind of better than everybody else and we've got some special stuff. And so there is, I think there's also a little bit of this. Maybe you call it arrogance, maybe call it optimism. Maybe you call it, you know, realist them that they've had a great track record. Some of these, especially as asset managers come in and sort of say, yeah, but we've got the secret sauce and our secret sauce works really well with, you know, annuity liability, uh, structures.

And so, you know, we've got the raw materials and what we really need to do is just kind of package it up and cook the meal. And then everybody, all the diners are going to love it. And I think, and so I think everybody kind of has a view that they've got some sort of special ingredient that they're going to sprinkle into the, to the meal to make it work, but to your point, I mean, it's very much red ocean and that's why we, I try to communicate that to all of our prospective clients that this is really, really hard. And a lot of times I feel like I'm kind of the guy raining on everybody's parade in this conversation because everyone gets excited about the opportunity to be the next to theme.

And my point is, yeah, but a theme was here 10 years before you were, and the world looked completely different back then replicating that playbook is going to take another 10 years. And so don't expect to show up and have success overnight. And by the way, you say you have special sauce. Everyone I talked to says they have special sauce. If they didn't think they had special sauce, they wouldn't be buying a life insurance company and trying to get into the space, because to your point, it is heavily commoditized.

Ramsey Smith (10:13.862) Mm.

Bobby (10:19.497) Over time, we'll find out who really has the right playbook. And by the way, I think it's a lot more than what most of these asset managers and private equity firms think they think we've got great raw materials, we're going to cook a great meal. Well, in order to do that, you've got to have a great chef. And what that means, and you know, Paul, from your vantage point is you got to have great distribution relationships. You've got to have compelling product. You've got to have a great marketing story. You've got to have great systems and processes. Your new business needs to be flawless. Your agent portal needs to be good. Your client portal needs to be good. There's branding.

corporate story ratings. Like when you really think about it, yes, ingredients are a big piece of the puzzle, but the actual construction of the meal is where a lot of these firms, I think, kind of miss the importance of that. And so they come in thinking, well, I've got great raw ingredients. I'm going to be, even though it's Red Ocean, I'll make it work. Not realizing I've got to assemble a team to make this work. And that's where I think the jury's still out on some of these firms is do they have the staying power so that over the next 10 years, they'll figure out how to really come in.

Kind of build that persistent business. Some will and some won't. And by the way, I mean, we've seen some fantastic examples of where this has worked recently. Like I would throw a speed out there. A speed is a great example of a company that kind of came out of nowhere and has built a brand and has fantastic processes, like they're sticking around very clearly. Um, I'd say, you know, I've Dex this is sort of showing signs of that too. Other firms are much more transactional and those are different paths, right? Those are different. They're making different choices.

Paul Tyler (11:22.761) Yeah.

Bobby (11:44.061) I think we're going to see that again, play out over the next few years and how that, how that stuff works out.

Paul Tyler (11:49.784) Yeah, I've heard really good things about the speed of what Lew's doing there. I think it's a real interesting company. I think I saw it in some of our stats. I think they did like two billion dollars of sales or something last year. It's impressive. Yeah, Bobby, thanks for the high praise. It's hard. This business is a... It's a hard business. Now, I've had the opportunity to do this twice. Once with F&G when we rebrand, bought it from Old Mutual, took it to a certain point.

team there has done a spectacular job taking it to the next level. Got the opportunity with TISA to do it a second time. And I think to your point, where are you starting from and when are you starting from it? Right? Like the starting point with F&G, you know, in 2011 was very different than, you know, Phoenix in 2016. And the market's changed, right? The distribution environment has changed. The product has changed a lot.

Bobby (12:21.201) Yeah, they have.

Paul Tyler (12:48.156) I do think the one thing that, you know, what remains constant, that's always a good opportunity, is to your point, it's persistence and consistency is incredibly valuable in this marketplace. Big splash, high rates, yeah. So, if we shift gears to product, maybe for a few minutes, you mentioned your focus on proprietary indices are a lot. We have a lot. We have quite a few in

Bobby (13:00.217) Yep. Yeah, I completely agree.

Paul Tyler (13:18.108) I would say the bloom came off the rose in the pandemic when we saw incredibly high volatility and then we started to see high rates, which allowed companies, yes, on the MYGAs side to offer high rates, but then also on the FII side, all of a sudden we could offer much higher participation rates on conventional indices like the S&P 500. Where are we headed this year?

Bobby (13:42.349) Yeah, we, uh, we, as a firm draw a distinction between product development and index development. And those are two totally different things. Um, and so we, as a firm don't do much in the index space. We, we write about them. We watch them, but when our clients say, Hey, what indexes do you guys like? We go, we don't, whoa, whoa. That's not our business. You can put any index you want to into your FIA. And if you pick one that is optimized for back tests and is not going to work well in the future, that's.

Kind of on you, right? We're not, we're not. So, so I think from our point of view, we're trying to be more agnostic. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people were not agnostic. I think there was a big story coming in really 2015 and kind of beyond, maybe even going back to 2012, this, this narrative that these indexes were going to completely change the economics of the product, illustrations, you know, kind of seemed to back that up when you got FIAs illustrating the top FIA right now illustrates at 33%. So when you think about a, a principal protected non-registered product, yes, that's real Ramsey.

non-registered product illustrating at 33% returns. That is telling, we are very far away at that point from the traditional FIA story of downside protection, upside potential fixed income alternative. We have now stretched somewhere deep into this idea that FIA can be an equity replacement with no risk. And I think the FIA world effectively levered up on that concept.

because of the illustration regulations and because of all the money to be made in those indexes and because advisors were looking for a new story to tell. There was a lot of reason. It wasn't just one cause where all these calls kind of lined up. And of course the banks and asset managers are more than happy to, to supply what is effectively an infinite number of indexes into the market. I mean, the joke I always make on stage is we've got 180 there in FIA and IUL products, what is the possible number of indexes that could be made? And the answer is what's infinite. You can create an infinite number of indexes. And so this is just a very small subset.

The subset, by the way, that illustrates well and the back test well, and that, and that carriers felt like had a good enough story to put in there, put in their products. So I think, I think we as an industry levered up really hard on that. Um, and it worked great in a low rate environment because you could show the high par rates, even though people didn't realize, yeah, you get a higher par rate on an index that has very low intrinsic equity participation. And so the effective result is actually very similar to if you just got a true par rate on the S and P, but it was sort of gussied up and other, you know, the fixed income sleeve was adding some.

Bobby (16:06.565) some alpha on the illustration. Like you kind of, your Sharpe ratio looks really high on these things. So anyway, we levered up on that. Yeah. 2020 was an issue for sure, but most indexes were actually positive in 2020. So at least, at least they sort of showed, okay, not compared to the West, where the S and P was, but they sort of showed, okay, 2022 to me was the year where everything sort of fell apart because all these indexes, most of them had pushed into long duration, fixed income that got crushed and then the equity component crap got crushed, you know, 21 comes around S and P has an amazing year. I'm sorry.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (16:17.422) Thank you.

Bobby (16:35.729) 2023 comes around, S&P has an amazing year, but these indexes lag. Why is that? Well, because the way that it happened was you had a few stocks in the S&P that drove the return and a lot of these indexes were either multi-asset indexes or calibrated towards low volatility or maybe even equal market cap weighted exposure to equities, but that didn't work in 23. And, and at the same time we had rates going up for most of the year and most of them were allocated there and so they get crushed and so to me, 23, 23 is actually the year of like disillusionment. 2022 is everything went down and so did these indexes. Oh, well, 2023 is like.

Wait a second. You know, we were supposed to have a great year this year and we didn't. Why, why did that happen? So what I've seen this year is all the, all the banks and as a managers have been coming out with kind of next generation concepts that don't use long duration fixed income and have higher volatility targets or use volatility overlays for their, I mean, sorry, use the duration overlays for the fixed income sleep. Like they're trying to sort of, or they just get out of fixed income all together and just use cash. They're trying to sort of say, it's sort of like when my kids don't apologize, even though they're effectively apologizing.

Okay. So it's like an effective apology of saying, we're sorry for all this stuff we gave you in the past, we're going to fix it in the future with this new variant, solving the problem of 2023 or 2022, you know, for 2024 and beyond. Okay. Well, that just means there's gonna be new problems that these new indexes aren't contemplating that will show up in the future. And so from a product standpoint, you know, if you were to say what, you know, what was innovative over the last 10 years, so much of it revolved around those indexes. And

That I think what we're seeing is that was not innovation that was reshuffling and creating new trade-offs that now are showing their teeth. And people are going to your point, Paul, like, well, why don't I just go back to the simple stuff like SMP 500 or like you guys have a NASDAQ sleeve, like why not just go back to a NASDAQ. Let's go back to the basics. And what's interesting is for a lot of the new indexes that we track, a lot of those indexes are going back to simpler structures. I was looking at one yesterday that.

The old version of it used to be sort of a long duration fixed income equity allocation. Now it's just pure equities and cash. So effectively all it is just a par rate on the S and P 500 stylized as an excess return index with a decrement on it as something different. Well, all that is, it's just exposure to the S and P with potentially a slightly more stable, you know, par rates. And so anyway, that being said, like.

Ramsey Smith (18:40.512) Mm-hmm.

Bobby (18:53.573) I think that's not innovation. I think where we need to go as an industry is, okay, what does the chassis of the future look like? And I think that's where it's really, really hard. So one of the things we tell customers, our name is Life Innovators. Theoretically, that means we should do innovative stuff. We have built some really innovative products. They have had trouble selling in the market because at the end of the day, most people who sell annuities just want to drop a ticket and move on. They don't want to explain, they don't want to learn something new, they don't want to go figure out a new story, they just want to do what they've been doing and drop the ticket and move on. So I think...

Part of the reason indexes were so attractive as an innovation substitute was it didn't require the advisors to change their story at all. But real innovation requires a little bit of work. And so I think where's the blue ocean kind of back to your comment, Ramsey, like it is an innovative products, but the challenge in our business is agents and IMOs don't want innovative products. They say they do, but they're actually don't because it messes with the system and the system works really well. And so.

You know, like give me innovation on the very fine little edges. Give me innovation that makes it illustrate better. Give me innovation that pays me more comp, but don't give me innovation that actually forces me to change my story and educate advisors because that takes time, energy and effort, and I'd rather just keep dropping tickets and move on. And I think that's a little bit of the challenge here is like the blue ocean's hard to get because everybody's making so much money in the red ocean and they don't really want to go shift over to the new stuff. So that's a little bit of where I think we're at a break point is like we, the world has changed.

Our products need to change too. That is not just index development, it's product development. And yet that's the hardest thing, frankly, this industry has to do. And it takes a long time for that to work.

Ramsey Smith (20:31.784) Yeah, you know, I think that, sorry, Tisa, let me just, I wanna, I'll come back. But this, in my view, this ultimately mirrors some of the same things you see in the mutual fund industry, right? Like, you know, active versus passive, versus passive funds, thematic funds. At the end of the day, like, the storytelling part of it is just part of the ethos of...

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (20:32.063) Yep.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (20:36.462) Sure.

Ramsey Smith (20:58.844) of personal finance, I would argue even institutional at times, certainly personal finance. And so I think that, I think it's not unique to this industry. I think you see it sort of, you know, across the board. I would ask, you know, so what do some of these, what do some of these chassis of the future look like? So what is it that, what are some of the things you suggested that you think are a better solution but are a little bit early because people need to...

Because the people that sell them need to better understand how they work.

Bobby (21:30.277) Yeah, great question. And by the way, I completely agree. I love the active versus passive analogy for engineered indexes versus like the S and P 500. And I actually make the joke that these engineered indexes aren't even active. They're algorithmic, right? You set them up and then you're hands off. So at least with an active manager, they can change their strategy along the way, as long as they stay within the fund mandate, but these indexes, like you set it up in 2011 or 2012, you can't go in and change the index rules. You got to create a new version of it, but you can't go in and like,

Ramsey Smith (21:39.132) Yeah.

Bobby (22:00.005) So it's sort of, it's almost like a different category, but I totally agree. It's it's we've got ebbs and flows on that product chassis, you know, they're tricky because we have these defined categories in the industry. So let me give you one that I think is kind of interesting that we've seen more of, uh, this sort of idea that you can do is across between a my go and an FIA. And this idea of like a, we, we haven't got a good analogy on this. Everyone's calling a mafia, right? Like a multi-year FIA, multi-year guarantee FIA, make FIA. No one knows what to call it.

Ramsey Smith (22:06.613) Yeah.

Ramsey Smith (22:27.649) Alright.

Bobby (22:28.297) But if you think about it, it's a logical concept. So for example, what is a my go? My go is a marketing term for a fixed deferred annuity with guarantee option periods. Okay, well, what do you call an FIA product that has, for example, a five year or seven year or even a 10 year guarantee on the cap level? That's a my go. It's a multi-year guarantee annuity. We're just guaranteeing the cap. We're not guaranteeing a return, we're guaranteeing the cap. So that's an interesting concept. You can't do that when interest rates are super low, the yield isn't there for it. With.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (22:28.462) Thanks for watching!

Ramsey Smith (22:48.748) Hmm.

Bobby (22:56.133) The current environment, you can get away with that. We see more and more companies doing things like that or combining sort of base guarantees with some sort of guaranteed index exposure on top. American Life has done this, Ibexas has done this. We feel the companies out there that have kind of done this. That's a category that sort of fits between. On the variable side, think about like a contingent deferred annuity. CDAs have been the next big thing for years.

And there's all the logic in the world for why CDAs make sense, right? You can have separately managed accounts when you can layer a guarantee on top of it. Like if you describe that to an RAA, they would all say, I'd rather have a CDA than to talk about variable annuities. And yet CDAs never go anywhere because it's a change in process. There are some new rules built around it. Like, and people don't ultimately want to make the, yes, you're going to say something.

Ramsey Smith (23:43.268) Oh, well, I'm going to say that that's a battle over who owns the assets. Right. So if it's a, if it's a CDA, then the RRA keeps the assets. If, if it's not a CDA, then the carrier has the assets and, you know, just. Yeah. So this chair has company does. And so, and, and my, you know, my only, I like conceptually, I like the CDA, but from a risk management perspective, I mean, you're, you're selling, you're just selling pure tail risk. Right. And, and, and so.

Bobby (23:47.288) Yeah.

Bobby (23:53.921) Insurance company, yeah, totally agree.

Ramsey Smith (24:12.454) I like it less from a risk management perspective. Just my two cents.

Bobby (24:14.777) It's, you know, it's interesting. We have a client who's done, yeah, we've done clients who've done CDA or has done a CDA and I say, if you do it right, the pricing actually looks a lot like a VA. It's not, it's not, it's not as much of a crop. There's not as much of just tail as you think, cause you can actually set up some structures on the, on the fund. Um, and, and also if he has a lot of cross-pollination between like the M&E, the fund expenses and the rider fee, whereas you have to be very explicit with that on the CDA. But to your point, it's a different structure. It's a different owner. It's kind of a different ownership mentality.

Ramsey Smith (24:28.529) Yeah.

Ramsey Smith (24:37.347) Yeah.

Bobby (24:42.673) So I say that's one, you know, RYLA versus VA, we're seeing blurred lines there too, like equitable, huge in the RYLA space, where they are now adding RYLA funds to some of their traditional VA contracts. Like, again, why do we have a separate category for RYLA? Really all that is just a subset of variable annuities. So those are the sorts of things there. And then on the income side, you've got all these ideas of like, how do you get work-side income type products? How do you get sort of the built-in defined income features inside of group plans? Like...

That whole world is trying to get traction. There's all sorts of issues there. I'll give you one that's personal for me. We built an FIA product that effectively has a lot of the characteristics of a RYLA, but it's a non-registered product. And so it's an FIA that allows you to have downside exposure without piercing principle. We call it a FYLA, right? It's kind of a joke, because it's not really a category either, but it's somewhere between an FIA and a RYLA. There's no trade-offs.

Paul Tyler (25:33.088) Hmm.

Bobby (25:37.893) So if you're a producer and you want to sell, you know, 0% floors, just like a normal FIA, you can do it. If you want to have negative floors, you can have access. So it's a technological advancement in that it gives you all the features and benefits of an FIA with some of the features and benefits of a RYLA with no trade-offs. And yet people are choking on the fact that it's just a little bit slightly different than a normal FIA product. And it's like,

Yes, but it gives you this ability to have these annual reviews with clients where you can talk about risk appetite and you can allow, you know, clients who've had great gains can put some of that at risk, get way more upside and allows you to look more and more like equities over time. Like it opens up this incredible conversation from a planning standpoint customers and in terms of real returns, we have two academic papers showing that these outperform FIAs all day every day because of the larger risk exposure does not matter. Agents who get it love it. Most agents are like it, this, this is a little bit different.

Ramsey Smith (26:11.052) Mm-hmm.

Bobby (26:33.853) And I'm a busy over here selling like my normal FIA with this, you know, index that I like talking about. And so like, don't, don't bother me with any different. I'm, I'm busy. I'm happy to do what I'm doing. And that's, I think the challenge in this space is there are clear. Chassis improvements we can make. Um, and again, I even argue this NASL income writer you guys came out with. It allows us sort of higher upfront with a lesson to tail. Like that's a chassis improvement. North American control X chassis improvement allows multiple income streams all at once.

Whether advisors care about it is completely a separate question. And whether they're going to take time to learn about it. Again, completely separate question.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (27:12.534) Thanks, Bobby. I want to go back. So let me just say, I like this restaurant analogy that you were playing with, special sauce and the meals and all of that. So I kind of want to go back to that a little bit where you're talking about new entrants into the market and why they were coming in and what they think they can offer. There's no special sauce. We're innovatish who are not really innovating. And talk a little bit about the customer. So I'm going to call the customer the diner, right? And can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing changing there?

We've talked about what's constant and what's maybe not changing, but I'm curious what you've seen, maybe what you're advising your clients on. If it's not going to be product-based, what are their expectations? Are they looking for the line cook to become the personal chef? Where are you seeing this shift in what the diners, the customers, investors are looking for from these carriers outside of product?

Bobby (28:04.205) Yeah, great, great question. Um, great question. So, so who is the customer? I think is always the operative question here. And I'd love to say that people buying the annuities of the customers, but y'all know that's not the case, right? The customers are the advisors who are selling this stuff. And then, and then in a lot of ways, kind of, and especially in our world, right? The IMO channel, it's, it's the upline on what's the IMO and, and they're the ones who are really kind of consuming, if you will, the meals we're creating. And I want to be clear too, I'm a believer in product innovation.

And I do think that's a piece of the puzzle, but it's, it's the way you build long-term market share, not short-term market share. So, so I think there is always and always must be an innovative product angle to what you're doing, not because you're going to sell a lot of it out of the gate, but because over the next 10 years, Paul, to your point on persistency and consistency in the business and stickiness, that's how you build long-term stickiness, but you can't, you can't expect mass adoption, you know, on, on day one.

So what do they, what do they want? What they, what I think they want. So increasingly it's changing a little bit. What I think they want is they want simple processes. Like we, as speed is just a great example of this. They have a fantastic new business process and their advisors who just love doing. Working with the speed of because of the process. And so I think, I think simplification of the process is part of it. Um, I think it's a big piece of it. I think, I think a corporate story matters too.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (29:20.203) easily.

Bobby (29:26.181) You know, feeling like they're connected to the company, feeling like there are people there that they like, like this is a thing today, a relationship business that matters and that counts for a lot. Um, and then I think they are looking for stories to tell in terms of product to fill niches that they may not fill. Today are kind of around the edges. Um, but look, that's not, that leaves a lot of open turf that I think is grabbed by the incumbents. And so that's why, even though yes, the top five are always trading share, the top five are pretty stable.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (29:32.59) Thank you.

Bobby (29:56.633) Right. In the FIA world, it's, it's kind of a theme, Allianz American equity. Like, you know, those companies stay up there kind of for a re Sam and like, they stay up there for a reason, which is they've already got the mind share on all the, like all the main dishes are covered. We're, we're dabbling in the appetizers, the desserts and the cocktails, but, but they're sort of cooking the main dishes. And I think that's a little bit of where, you know, for a lot of companies, they kind of realize where they are in the meal. Um, and recognizing that going in and trying to say, like, don't sell Allianz is, is very, very difficult.

versus having something that tells a nice story for the customers where Allianz is not a fit. And that's where I think most of these companies were kind of trying to say, okay, how do I work kind of work around some of this stuff? Yeah, competing heads up against Allianz and Athene is just exceedingly difficult, especially Athene these days, it's almost impossible, frankly.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (30:31.523) Thank you.

Yeah, around that.

Paul Tyler (30:44.004) Yeah. Well, Bobby, I know we're kind of close to the top of the time. We will not do this topic justice, but technology. And first of all, thank you so much for coming out to our Retar Tech event, April 8th through 10th in Las Vegas. This will be great. Great to see you in person and have you on our panel talking more about this. So people listening want to hear more about it, come out to Las Vegas, join us in person. We'll do a couple of shows out there live as well. We'll have to get people involved.

So you mentioned process with Aspida. Now, where does technology fit in this process? Now, I'm not going to go deep into our product because I also want to make it easy for our compliance department, not to have to review this stuff, but we're doing something different. You kind of said that. Now, how do you get agents to do something different, make it real easy? I would say we've got a three-prong strategy here on the tech side. So we've got an interesting partnership with Life Yield. He's been sort of managing this where

You've got an advisor who's more of a financial planner. We've got a tool where our product kind of plugs right in. You know, Sheryl Moore saw it. She really liked it. The other end, we've got these retirement checks. Like I can email you a check to Bobby Samuelson, show you viscerally, here are two checks you'll get. Higher amount on this date, lower amount on this date. And we've got something in the middle, which is a generative AI platform. Ties and I are having just a fun time working it through our risk management department, but...

which will help you look, you're going to do a lot of emails and content. How do you position this and super easily sell a product? Where do you see tech fitting here? You know, for again, our looking, I'm going to look at our customers as agents for this conversation.

Bobby (32:25.949) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, what you just described are ways to help them tell the story more efficiently and more effectively. And I think that's a big piece of it. I think for a lot of companies though, it's just literally not screwing up the application process. Like, don't ever complicate it. It's having good EAP, it's having good reporting, it's having a way for them to go check in on a case status, it's having a way for them to see what's going on with the 1035 exchange. It's a lot of blocking and tackling, and that's where I think a lot of companies kind of.

Like you got to get that stuff right first before you can do all the things you guys are talking about. Um, but that being said, yeah, I do. I am a big believer that tech is a part of the enablement process here. On the flip side of that, a lot of these agents are 55, 60 years old. Their clients are 55, 60, 65 years old. Like tech, you know, you gotta, you gotta kind of do tech on their terms. And I think that's a little bit of the dance here is like, how do you create tech that is attracted to them and that they can get their arms around without over, overburdening them to some degree. Um,

With some of this stuff, what gets me excited too, is thinking about new markets for our products. And I see this on the annuity side and the life side too, like how does tech get you to new markets? And I think that's the part of the industry is just now starting to kind of figure, figure out. Um, and it is not traditional advisors. It's, it's younger advisors. And look, younger advisors do business differently than older advisors. When I talk to younger advisors, most of them have, you know, virtual practices that unimaginable to advisors that are 60 plus years old.

to think about that back when they were in their thirties. And so there's just a very different feel for younger advisors. And I don't think most of those advisors are working with on the annuity side, annuity customers yet, right? Like if you're 35 years of working with people your own age, there's some exceptions to that. That's where we see, so on the life side, I see a lot more of this sort of tech sort of integration and enablement going on because it's younger customer, younger advisor that's coming for annuities. It's just going to be a few years out. And I think.

The investments you guys are making and other companies are making is laying the groundwork for that going forward. I mean, if we pin our hopes on independence, insurance only agents, selling annuities forever, that is a kind of in the old school way, that is a shrinking market. It'll always be there, but it's a shrinking market. These are great products. These do fantastic things for families and for people. We need to get the story out. We can't be wedded to distribution that works a certain way. We've got to broaden that. I think.

Bobby (34:45.285) You can't do that without thinking about tech enablement. Um, and so that does get me excited as a product guy. It's not really in my wheelhouse as much, but it does spur some interesting questions about, okay, if we know innovation kind of hits the wall, sometimes with traditional advisors. If you switch to more tech enabled, can you do things in product that used to be kind of unimaginable, but we'll work in these new environments. And I've got a couple of clients where that's exactly the market strategy is use tech with different products that would not fly in the normal space.

Ramsey Smith (34:53.812) Hmm.

Bobby (35:12.601) But will fly when you kind of go after new distribution, new customers, new advisors, new technology, and you can tell that story effectively. And we're seeing that, yeah, that works. Like they don't come in with preconceived notions. And when they come in without the preconceived notions, they're willing to hear new ideas and tell those new stories. And it's, it's very cool to see that kind of stick with some of these folks in a way that would not happen with traditional advisors.

Paul Tyler (35:37.904) Bobby, this was tremendous. Hey, listen, we're at time. Thanks so much for coming. Ramsey, thank you. Tisa, Tisa. And I think we lost Bruno, unfortunately. I think the internet just did not cooperate with us. Blame it on the snow and the cold here. So we'll get him back next time. But hey, thanks so much. Hey, listen, and if you like this show, share it with your friends and be sure to tune in again next week for another...

Ramsey Smith (35:46.176) Pleasure as always.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (35:49.45) Thanks, Bobby Yeah.

Tisa Rabun-Marshall (35:55.71) Mm-hmm.

Paul Tyler (36:04.849) episode of That Annuity Show. Thanks so much!

Bobby (36:08.23) guys.