App Helps LPL Advisers Explain Annuities

The Interactive Annuity Visualizer Application, which is being customized for LP advisers as part of LPL’s annuity tools and resources platform, was designed to help clearly and quickly highlight the benefits of annuities as part of a client’s retirement plan. The technology was developed to help simplify the message of retirement and educate advisers and clients about the use of annuities for income. 

Used as a dynamic and interactive tool, Lincoln’s Annuity Visualizer streamlines the process, incorporates hypotheticals, case studies and marketing collateral to help wholesalers and advisers aptly explain the various options available to clients.

Lincoln Financial has been active in partnering with advisers to design a better way to effectively prepare their clients to have an income stream in retirement. In 2012, the company developed an easy-to-use Web-based application, the Annuity Visualizer, that enables advisers to better inform consumers and help them meet needs for income distribution.

“We’ve heard from our partners about the need for an easier way to deliver guidance on statistical information, hypotheticals and product specifications,” said John Kennedy, head of retirement solutions distribution for Lincoln Financial Distributors. It took advisers multiple steps to get the same information, according to Kennedy. The Visualizer provides this information in significantly less time, he said. 

The firm’s goal is to provide its advisers with tools to enhance their clients’ education, process and experience, said Rob Pettman, senior vice president, investment and planning solutions of LPL Financial. “The Annuity Visualizer tool provides a new medium to have meaningful dialogue around insured retirement income strategies as it offers an interactive and personalized way of bringing these concepts to life,” Pettman said.