Deals & People September 27, 2023

Adviser Product Partnerships – 9/27/23

Transamerica to collaborate with Bestow; Envestnet partners with Iconik; Lumiant announces partnership with CFGS; and more.

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Transamerica to Collaborate With Bestow to Enhance Financial Protection Offerings

Transamerica announced a partnership with Bestow, a technology company in the life insurance industry. Bestow will offer customers a digital platform with enhanced self-service options for Transamerica’s life insurance products.

“Partnering with Transamerica to reimagine the application, underwriting, and policy issuance of new products on our platform has been rewarding for both teams,” Melbourne O’Banion, CEO and co-founder of Bestow, said in a statement.

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The Bestow platform simplifies the insurance application process for customers and agents and, in most cases, speeds up the process to go from application to decision in less than 10 minutes, according to the firm. The partnership will allow Transamerica to provide new products, including new final expense offerings.

“We are excited that Bestow will be building out a platform that redefines the Transamerica experience with our agents and clients,” Andrew DeMarco, head of life solutions at Transamerica, said in a statement. “Powered by Bestow technology, Transamerica will be able to enhance not only the way we engage with new clients—digitally and in minutes—but also how we provide service throughout the policy lifecycle.”

Envestnet to Partner With Iconik to Empower Investor Choice With Proxy Voting

Envestnet has partnered with voting technology provider Iconik to enhance proxy voting solutions for the firm’s sustainable quantitative portfolios, allowing individual investors to better implement their views in the voting process.

The Iconik partnership will help advisers increase retention and wallet share, encourage long-term stewardship of capital and further personalize the client experience. Advisers in the Envestnet ecosystem will have access to set-and-forget voting technology.

Reporting on key ballot items and the outcomes of those ballot items is accessible through a dashboard on which advisers can view relevant voting metrics and share those results with clients.

“Our partnership with iconik provides advisers who rely on the Envestnet ecosystem with a seamless mechanism that simplifies the process of exercising proxy votes on issues that matter most to their clients,” Brandon Thomas, Envestnet co-founder and co-CIO, said in a statement. “We continue to hear about the democratization of proxy voting as an important development in the industry.”

Lumiant Announces Partnership With Concourse Financial Group Securities

Lumiant Pty. Ltd., an advice and client engagement platform, announced a strategic partnership with Birmingham, Alabama-based Concourse Financial Group Securities Inc., an insurance and financial planning firm. Together, Lumiant and CFGS will support advice firms in growing their businesses.

“Lumiant’s financial technology platform is the new paradigm in client experience,” Libet Anderson, president of wealth management at Concourse, said in a statement. “By incorporating their life-based planning approach into our robust ecosystem, we can better support our financial professionals in aligning clients’ unique needs with the appropriate solutions, helping them along their paths of financial wellness and life success.”

In April, Lumiant acquired Genivity, a longevity and health planning solution that provided financial professionals with personalized advice based on the client’s lifestyle and longevity choices.

“We are excited to provide holistic planning solutions that address the whole person and their whole life, so CFGS financial professionals can help their clients live their best lives,” Blake Wood, Lumiant’s U.S. CEO, said in a statement.

SMArtX to Launch SMArtY Platform with Russell Investments’ Model Portfolios

SMArtX Advisory Solutions announced a strategic collaboration with Russell Investments, the first asset management firm to offer its investment strategies through the SMArtY platform.

SMArtY provides fee-sensitive advisers with a variety of features, including tax services, automated account rebalancing, seamless trade execution and access to third-party model investment strategies, all without the costs associated with conventional wealth management solutions.

SMArtY is a manager-sponsored, no-fee strategist platform powered by SMArtX’s managed accounts technology. The platform will launch to the public on September 28, and professionals can join a waitlist for exclusive early access.

“Uniting SMArtX’s state-of-the-art managed accounts technology with Russell Investments’ world-class asset management prowess, we are presenting traditional RIAs, wrap fee advisers, and financial planners with an unparalleled cost-free solution to address their investment management needs,” Jonathan Pincus, CEO of SMArtX, said in a statement.

Data & Research September 27, 2023

FINRA Study Tests Senior Vulnerability to Social Security Scams

Older adults without cognitive impairment are still vulnerable to scams, FINRA and JAMA found.

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In an experiment designed to mimic a real-world imposter scam, 16.4% of older adults engaged without skepticism, but their psychological and behavioral measures were comparable to those in other engagement levels, according to a recent study by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Journal of the American Medical Association Network.

As financial fraud targeting older adults is on the rise, the study investigated how vulnerable older adults are to government impersonation scams. In the cross-sectional study, conducted from October through December 2021, the firm surveyed 664 older adults among communities in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. Data analysis was performed from February through August 2023.

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A fictitious government agency reached out to the older adults about a potential compromise of personal information relevant to their Social Security and Medicare benefits. Participants were exposed to deceptive materials through direct mail, email and phone calls by a live agent.

Based on the phone call data, a total of 441 participants (68.5%) did not engage, not answering the phone or calling in. Meanwhile 97 participants (15.1%) engaged but appeared skeptical. They answered or called in but questioned the legitimacy of the outreach and did not give away personal information.

106 (16.4%) converted, meaning they answered or called in without skepticism. They also confirmed they did not change their personal information or provided the last four digits of their Social Security number.

The study found that older adults who engaged but with skepticism had the highest cognition and financial literacy, but no differences were observed in psychological and other behavioral measures based on the levels of engagement.

“The findings of this cross-sectional study provide powerful evidence that many older adults than currently recognized, including many without cognitive impairment, actively engage with potentially fraudulent pitches and are at risk of victimization and the deleterious health and financial consequences that result,” the study proposed in its conclusion.

Participants were older adults participating in the Rush Memory and Aging Project, an ongoing cohort study of chronic conditions of aging. Among the participants, 501 (77.8%) were female, while 143 (22%) were male, with a mean age of 85.6 (7.5) years.

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