IRI VISION: DIGITAL FIRST INITIATIVE DELIVERING RESULTS

Katherine Dease
Chief Technology and Innovation Officer

IRI’s Digital First for Annuities initiative is transforming how the industry engages with financial professionals and clients and working to ensure the industry has the infrastructure needed to provide the best possible service. When fully implemented and adopted, innovators will be able to build superior experiences that engage financial professionals and consumers in a more modernized, streamlined manner.

Building a New Data and Standards Infrastructure
As the next step in this journey, we have issued a request for information (RFI) to develop a new infrastructure for data standards and a single source of consistent product data.

New infrastructure is critical to the digital modernization of our industry. When completed, we will have an ecosystem where annuities are consistently represented alongside traditional investments, users have a seamless presale-to-sale experience, and annuities are managed as easily as other investments after purchase.

Promising Results
We have also delivered promising results in other areas of our initiative. IRI members are adopting initial standards that we developed with ACORD to streamline the annuity experience.

One standard will facilitate real-time tracking of annuity application status, which enables financial professionals to address issues quickly. Another will provide financial professionals with transparency into their ready-to-sell status.

A third standard will reduce a significant error-prone process involving what the industry calls transfer, exchanges, or replacement business. Current manual processes and errors can cause the transaction to take up to seven times longer than necessary.

IRI’s members, leveraging the leading data exchange platform, DTCC, have implemented existing solutions (carrier-to-carrier attachments and money settlement services) to slash transfer issuance time by a whopping 60 percent. Paperless transfer automation will begin in September, promising even more efficiency gains. By going paperless, we are on track to nearly eliminate not-in-good-order rates on transfer business and reduce the process to one day.

Annuity Parity in Financial Planning Tools
IRI is working with three of the largest financial planning platforms to roll out changes that substantially improve how annuities are modeled and presented. The changes will infuse these vendors’ planning tools with more education about annuity products, streamlined annuity workflows, and embedded new visuals that show the value of the annuity alongside simulations, calculations, and cash flow reports detailing protected income, baseline modeling, and modeling requirements for certain annuity products.

This development will put protected lifetime income products on an equal footing with other investment choices within those planning tools. Financial professionals will be able to seamlessly demonstrate how annuities align with customers’ investments and retirement saving goals.

Digital Revolution
Our Digital First for Annuities initiative is transforming the landscape, making annuities more accessible and manageable. By setting new standards and embracing innovation, IRI is ensuring that financial professionals and clients experience a streamlined, modern approach to retirement planning. The future of annuities is digital, and it’s here.

Contact: Dan Zielinski