A roadmap for launching a successful annuities program in your firm

August 6, 2025

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

• An Outsourced Insurance Desk (OID) partner gives RIAs access to vetted annuities without the burden of advisor insurance licensing, while offering expert annuity guidance and operational support. This makes it easier than ever to offer access to fee-based annuities to your clients.
• The Flourish Annuities^∫ experience is built for efficiency, empowering advisors to focus on client interactions while our team manages the back-office work.
• Our rollout checklist helps you train your team, integrate your systems and bring annuities into your practice with ease. 

In the previous articles in The Annuities Opportunity series, we explored how annuities have evolved — from convoluted, commission-driven products to streamlined, fee-based solutions that align with the fiduciary model. We outlined the key benefits for both advisors and clients, introduced the major product types available through Flourish Annuities, and shared practical guidance on how to match each solution to a client’s investment goals.

In this article, we’ll look ahead. With sales of annuities reaching $432.4 billion in 2024 alone,¹ the interest in RIAs expanding client portfolio options to include a range of annuity solutions has never been stronger.

An OID makes it easy to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity. By removing advisor insurance licensing barriers and providing seamless, tech-enabled access, Flourish Annuities helps firms save time, reduce operational complexity, and improve the client experience of applying for an annuity.

Here, we’ll walk through the Flourish Annuities experience, how it works, what your team can expect, and explain how to seamlessly integrate access to annuities among client portfolio solutions with confidence.

Flourish Annuities makes offering access to annuities simple. As with other OIDs, Flourish Annuities holds all the necessary insurance licenses, freeing up advisors from that requirement to offer clients access to annuities. But the benefits of working with Flourish Annuities extend far beyond fulfilling essential licensing requirements.

Our team of Annuity Specialists partners with your advisors to provide portfolio reviews, helping the advisor to determine whether an annuity is a fit for a client’s investment needs. When your client opts to purchase an annuity product, we streamline the application process, manage the carrier communications, and provide white-glove support to you and your client throughout.

Just as important, the Flourish platform integrates directly with your existing tech stack. Details about annuity applications remain fully visible to you and your clients from the start of the process. Once the annuity is issued by the carrier, the details of the issued annuity appear alongside the other assets in your client’s portfolio on both the Flourish Advisor Portal and in your portfolio reporting system, so you can incorporate these products into your system just like any other holding. 

We handle the back office so you can stay focused on your clients. Here’s what a typical workflow looks like:

Step 1: Start the conversation

Ask your clients about any annuity contracts they may already hold. This will unearth existing contracts that may be outdated or underperforming, creating opportunities for replacement, while also letting you know which clients have existing annuity contracts that are still supporting their financial goals.

Step 2: Review recommendations

Once you request a portfolio review from Flourish Annuities, our experts will advise your team regarding: 

• Whether a client is a good candidate for an annuity
  
• Whether any existing annuity contracts align with the client's current financial goals and investment needs
• Whether the client may be better served with a replacement contract or a new annuity solution. Similarly, the team can discuss how new annuity allocations can help solve client investment challenges: from fixed income replacements to mitigating sequence of return risk in equity allocations all the way to guaranteed income for life.
  
  

Step 3: Discuss options with your client

You decide how and when to introduce the potential of an annuity replacement or a new annuity solution to your client. We’re here to support, not to sell: our experts can be directly included in the client conversation if desired, but we’re equally happy to stay in the background.

Step 4: Initiate the application

If your client decides to move forward, we’ll help you start an application on the Flourish Annuities platform. You decide how much information to prefill, as well as when you’re ready to send the application to your client for them to review, complete, and e-sign in a matter of minutes. Just a few clicks required!

Step 5: Track progress in real time

Once the application is submitted, Flourish Annuities takes care of the rest. You can monitor the status of each application and contract directly from your dashboard, so you're always in the loop. When the contract is issued by the carrier, it appears on your client’s dashboard and in the Advisor Portal — and through our integrations, it's fully visible as part of their portfolio.

When preparing to introduce access to annuity solutions, you’ll find two clear opportunities. The first are clients who already hold annuities — a group that makes up about 27% of clients according to a set of surveyed advisors.² These legacy contracts often present immediate opportunities for review, replacement, as they may have been purchased years or even decades before your advisory relationship, and may no longer align with your client’s current financial goals.

The second opportunity is clients who may benefit from purchasing new annuities. This is particularly of interest if expanding offerings is part of your firm’s growth strategy, or if you are looking to solve specific behavioral or investment challenges — from fixed income alternatives to mitigating sequence of return risk in equity holdings to creating lifetime income streams for clients. 

To serve both client groups effectively, your team needs a strong operational foundation that enables seamless collaboration, both internally and with your OID partner. 

The following checklist will help ensure your team is informed, empowered, and ready to make the most of the annuity opportunity. 

1. Name an internal champion

Select someone to be the point person for annuities internally. This person should serve as the go-to resource for your team, help coordinate with the Flourish Annuities team, and advocate for the initiative across the firm. This person may be on the investment committee, but may also be someone in your planning organization or in advisory leadership

2. Identify potential use cases

Where do annuities fit into your existing investment and planning process? Work with your investment committee to define how various annuity types may align with your firm’s investment strategies and client risk profiles. For example, MYGAs might be evaluated in the fixed income sleeve, while RILAs may be considered against buffered ETFs or structured notes. Creating this type of framework helps your team make consistent, client-aligned recommendations.

3. Provide team education

Your team members will have varying levels of familiarity with annuities. Ongoing education can get everyone up to speed and aligned.

• Define roles and responsibilities. Outline what Flourish Annuities will manage, what falls to the advisor, and where support staff fits in. Clear expectations and defined roles will keep things moving smoothly.  
• Offer structured education. Provide background and educational information on annuities, generally, in addition to clearly defining how your firm will integrate annuities into your existing processes and frameworks for suggesting inclusion of annuities into client portfolios.
• Build internal support systems. Create a dedicated internal messaging channel or regular meetings, host quarterly lunch-and-learns, and empower your internal champion to connect with colleagues and share best practices as your rollout progresses.

Our team will guide you through all of the above, working in partnership to provide all educational materials relating to annuity types and best use cases you need; your job is to ensure everything fits seamlessly with the way you educate your advisors on new opportunities. 

4. Enable tech integrations

Flourish Annuities is built to work seamlessly with the wealthtech platforms you already use, including Redtail, Orion, and more. Set up these integrations before your formal rollout so that once your clients start submitting annuity applications, your team can see updated information about the contracts alongside the rest of the portfolio. This will enable more informed conversations with your client.

5. Start the annuities conversation with clients

Begin by asking your clients about annuities they currently own. This simple question opens the door to the potential to replace outdated annuities that are no longer serving your clients’ needs, and potentially bring  those assets under your management. 

• Add a question about existing annuities to your new client questionnaire.
• Ask current clients at quarterly check-ins for the next two quarters — and put in place a process to ensure that your advisors have taken this step.
• Provide advisors with a basic script to broach the subject and introduce clients to the concept of 1035 exchanges, where applicable.
• Optional for firms pursuing net-new opportunities: Create a script for advisors to approach clients who fit one of your defined annuity personas to discuss the corresponding product type.

   

6. Review—and celebrate—results

Given the number of advisors who are unfamiliar with annuities, we’ve found it critical for firms to review success stories with their team. Let your colleagues know when you uncovered and improved upon a formerly held-away policy, or when a client calls in thankful about downside protection you helped put in place. Only by regularly discussing these success stories can you make annuities a part of your firm’s DNA and unlock real results for your clients.

These steps will help you build a solid foundation for launching an annuity program. After you’ve found early success with annuities, you can consider how to use them to further differentiate your firm. With Flourish Annuities by your side, client access to annuities can become a tool you can employ to deliver better client outcomes while growing your firm’s AUM.

Ready to explore the annuities opportunity at your RIA?

Connect with the Flourish Annuities team for more information.

About Flourish

Flourish builds technology that empowers financial advisors, improves financial lives and retirement outcomes, and delivers new and innovative investment options to advisors. Today, the Flourish platform is used by more than 1,000 wealth management firms representing more than $2.6 trillion in assets under management. Flourish is wholly-owned by MassMutual. For more information, visit www.flourish.com.