Jackson National Life Insurance Company announced it has expanded its relationship with Chicago-based Halo Investing, a platform for protective investments, to include the balance of Jackson’s advisor annuity products.

The two sides struck a deal last year for Halo to offer Jackson’s fee-based fixed index annuities (FIAs) and registered index-linked annuities (RILAs) on its platform. For Jackson, the motivation for the deal was its push to gain better traction in the registered investment advisor market.

“We believe that RIAs should have access to our solutions in a manner that best suits their business model,” said Bill Burrow, senior vice president at Private Wealth & Insurance Professionals for Jackson National Life Distributors. “The important aspect here is getting the word out to independent RIAs on how annuities have evolved to fit their models.”

After a year of distributing the FIA and RILA products on the Halo platform, Burrow said Lansing, Mich,-based Jackson was pleased with the exposure the annuities were receiving and moved to expand that relationship.

“It’s clear that [Halo} is getting the word out [and] telling the right story – a broad educational story – on annuities and putting the annuity where it fits,” Burrow said.

Burrow declined to provide any numbers on the amount Jackson had sold through the Halo platform.

In October, Halo agreed to start offering Jackson’s fee-based annuity products which includes its RIA exclusive advisory variable annuity, Jackson Retirement Investment Annuity, and its Perspective Advisors II variable annuity. All these products will be offered to advisors exclusively on Halo’s platform. This addition constitutes the full suite of advisor-based products according to Jackson and Halo.

Lee Moses, national sales director at Halo Insurance Services, praised the current relationship with Jackson saying it is the number one firm when it comes to annuity sales. He is thrilled to be offering its 3,000-5,000 advisors' direct access to Jackson’s advisor-based annuity products.

Over time annuities have become a more viable option for advisors which has prompted firms such as Jackson to expand its reach into the RIA community.

“Through product and process evolution, annuity solutions eloquently fit into the RIA’s business model,” Burrow said. “It has been a relatively new phenomenon for annuities in the advisory space.”

There have been three major changes that have allowed this transition. The first has to do with the natural transition brokerage firms are making to advisory models. Previously, the brokerage model of annuities would include the standard commission and surrender schedule. However, the new products geared toward advisors, does not include commissions or surrender charges.

“As the marketplace has evolved to begin having brokerage products and moving toward advisory products, annuities have trailed the industry in making that transition to advisory annuities,” Burrow said. “So today, we now have brokerage programs and advisory programs.”

The other change that took place with annuities had to do with the process. The data that is needed to manage the contracts has ported over from the insurance companies to their most commonly-used platforms, according to Burrow. Finally, RIAs do not have the licenses to offer these solutions. However, through the use of third-party platforms they no longer need them. These platforms hold the licenses that the advisors work through, Burrow said.

With these changes, Jackson pushed to expand its distribution network into the RIA market and now has nine partners it works with and is constantly looking for new ones. Burrow said if Jackson finds a firm that offers complementary distribution, it will pursue that relationship. The firm does not have a specific target number of partners it is seeking. 

For Halo, the relationship with Jackson has been successful as the firm has expanded its own business model, which originally started just offering structured notes, according to Moses. Given the similarities between notes and annuities, Moses said that Halo decided to expand into annuities.

“Management was looking into the industry and where they could expand and annuities and insurance made the most sense because it matches what they are doing even though it is different,” Moses said.

It has also been offering its platform to a number of different companies and has about 10 current working relationships. However, it has put any future deals on hold as it conducts a thorough review of the products it is currently offering. Moses said firm officials will evaluate them to see if they all continue to make sense on the platform.

There are certain products that it wants to offer to advisors. The first is term life insurance, which Halo will make available to those advisors using its platform on Jan. 1. Another longer-term product will be permanent life insurance, which Moses described as the future of the outsource insurance desk. However, those talks are only internal at this time.

The other main project that Halo has been developing over the past couple of months is its Change of Broker-Dealer business. As advisors transition from commission-based to fee-based business, these advisors wrote annuity contracts under a commission-based system.

Under the system they are transitioning to, they can no longer hold those assets. Halo is looking to provide a broker-dealer that can help these advisors not only transition to the new advisory business but also a way to continue to access the commissionable contracts, according to Moses.

“We can help the advisors to move away from their broker-dealer, which may restrict them from using advisory products and creating a very simple and easy platform to place the business on so they can now actively get into more of the advisory business but not lose contact with the old commissionable business that they had written in the past,” Moses said.

The firm currently has three companies that it is working on this project with several more in the pipeline.