Bill Atlee began his career as a life insurance agent with Fidelity Mutual Life, where he gained valuable experience in implementing tax, legal, and estate planning techniques for high-net-worth individuals. In 1992, he founded Direct Quote America, Inc., a nationally licensed brokerage firm that developed one of the industry’s first automated term insurance shopping services. As Founder & Chief Innovation Officer of iPipeline, a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions for the life insurance and financial services industry, Bill drives innovation and go-to-market strategy based on customer needs and industry pain points.
Russ Alan Prince: Bill, you’ve been in the financial services business for 34 years. How has it evolved?
Bill Atlee: I started my career helping high-net-worth clients transfer assets to the next generation with minimum tax consequences and used insurance as a vehicle to pay taxes on illiquid assets. Back then, wealthy clients needed an accountant, estate tax planner, insurance agent, money manager, and a good attorney. Today, the advisor has emerged as the client’s team quarterback and is expected to wear many hats, while pulling together the most competent resources. This convergence has created the opportunity for technology platforms, that were previously disparate, to integrate for a better advisor/client experience.
These technology platforms have advanced to embed insurance products alongside wealth products to create a frictionless, no-swivel-chair process that allows advisors to meet their goal of managing their client’s family wealth for generations to come.
Prince: How is technology impacting that collision of wealth management and wealth transfer?
Atlee: Advisors typically have a “growth first” mentality as most clients judge them on their annual returns. Transferring this accumulated wealth, in the most tax-efficient manner, however, is often overlooked. iPipeline’s technology strategy is to combine thousands of financial products that enable both growth and wealth transfer into the existing software platforms that are utilized by advisors, every day.
Prince: Why is this important for advisors?
Atlee: Beyond their stock portfolios, high-net-worth clients often have significant illiquid assets such as homes and businesses. Their heirs have to pay estate tax burdens directly from the managed portfolio, which reduces the liquid assets the advisor has worked so hard to manage and retain. The ability to preserve those managed assets, using other insurance products to pay estate taxes, enables the advisor to continue managing the portfolio for the family and for generations to come.
Advisors are increasingly seeking ways to make clients aware of possible tax ramifications of selling portfolio assets during their lifetime, as well as transferring assets upon their death. Why work so hard to grow a portfolio, only to give a huge chunk back to Uncle Sam upon your death? It’s the advisor’s fiduciary responsibility to keep their eyes on both.
Prince: How does iPipeline enable this to occur?
Atlee: iPipeline’s technology focuses on the frictionless sale of life and annuity products, securities, and the digital forms needed to execute these transactions. These tools and products easily integrate into existing advisor platforms. iPipeline has become the industry’s largest cloud-based software, moving millions of transactions each day for some of the largest financial institutions in the country. Our straight-through process makes these transactions faster and seamless for more than 400,000 advisors.
Clients are increasingly demanding digital interaction with their advisors. Offering customers product solutions that are riddled with paperwork, wet signatures, and delays do not provide the ideal customer experience. iPipeline has removed these barriers by digitizing the quote-apply-deliver process for insurance products, as well as streamlining many of the people/paper functions of wealth management.
Additionally, advisors don’t want to get tangled up in navigating their clients through processes or with financial products that they have little to no experience with. With iPipeline, we standardize the user experience across our platform so once an advisor knows how to transact for one financial product, they know how to do it for all. This approach minimizes confusion for the advisor and continues to allow them to build confidence with the client.
The bottom line is that advisors must appeal to all clients. Granted, some are more tech-savvy than others, but without a doubt, the next generation of clients will expect all processes to be an ideal digital experience. Now is the time for advisors to advance their technology game and prepare themselves to manage family wealth now and into the future.
Russ Alan Prince is the executive director of Private Wealth magazine and one of the leading authorities in the private wealth industry. He consults with family offices, the wealthy, fast-tracking entrepreneurs and select professionals. Connect with him on LinkedIn.com.