DPL Financial Partners: a turnkey platform that allows advisors to incorporate insurance products into their practice
is acquiring AnnuityFix: a solution that allows advisors to manage annuities without having to have a dual registration broker-dealer relationship.
Hot on the heels of Thinktum's announcement that it is acquiring Illustrate, we see another insurance technology merger that touches wealth management. Apart from both DPL Financial Partners and AnnuityFix servicing the RIA community, there is potentially a particularly interesting implication here for RIA breakaway activity.
When a broker-dealer rep is deciding if it is time to take the plunge and head to fee-only advisory, one of the considerations is the book of annuities they have created. This has the potential to create some stickiness with the brokerage model. The AnnuityFix product addresses this by allowing a broker-dealer rep to transition to an RIA and still keep their annuity business, removing the friction. Combining this with DPL's turnkey annuity and insurance platform could potentially accelerate or facilitate breakaway RIA creation. In fact, DPL has created a separate accelerator program just for this purpose.
According to David Lau, the Founder and CEO of DPL, "Annuities are often the last asset class tethering advisors to their broker-dealer. Since launching our Breakaway Accelerator late last year, we’ve begun working with scores of breakaway teams and rollups to transition annuity books." That seems to be a happy thought for those who advocate for the RIA
model. You can read the press release here.
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