Jefferson National charges a flat $20 monthly fee for Monument Advisor and pays no commissions to the RIAs that offer its product to investors.

“We were trying to elevate it from a held away product to a tax deferred money management platform,” Caplan says. “What we provide advisors with fits perfectly into their practice as fiduciaries. We’re more on point with the way the industry’s headed, we’ve been built well for that.”

Over the past 12 months, Caplan says Jefferson National has seen more interest and adoption from broker-dealers who recognize that the regulatory environment might require them to move away from a commission-based business model.

For advisors who were already fiduciaries, like RIAs, products like Monument Advisor were the only ways to offer the benefits of an annuity’s tax deferrals. At the Fidato Group, a Strongsville, OH-based RIA, Tony D’Amico says that some clients have been offered Jefferson National’s investment-only variable annuity when they’ve outgrown traditional tax-deferred retirement accounts.

“We like using Monument Advisor when there’s a clear benefit for tax deferral,” D’Amico says. “If they own an existing variable annuity, we often consider moving to Monument Advisor depending on the tax consequences. If someone is a high earner through salary or investment income, Monument Advisor’s tax deferral provides a tangible benefit.”

D’Amico says that the Fidato Group also considers a variable annuity for clients with a long time horizon for accumulation, like a young person in a higher tax bracket.

Since Monument Advisor is simply a tax-advantaged investment wrapper, it isn’t appropriate for retirement accounts, Caplan says.

Caplan says that other annuity manufacturers may follow Jefferson National’s lead in offering low-cost, commission-free products for fiduciary advisors to use with their clients.

“To some degree, I think there will be more competition for us,” Caplan says. “There already has been some more competition, over the past five years we’ve seen more low-cost products come to market. Five or ten years ago, when we were building this out, there was not a category of investment-only variable annuities.”

Cases in point: LPL and Voya. Both broker-dealers have made moves to boost the sales of fee-based variable annuities amid the DOL’s rulemaking and declining commission revenues.