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Annuities Research

Digging into the Customer Experience: Annuities

Corporate Insight’s Annuity Monitor keeps clients on top of developments in the annuity business. Our value-added annuities research digs deeply to identify and assess specific aspects not only of the customer experience, but also the ways in which leading insurers market their annuity products to independent financial advisors.


Advisor Literature Order System PDF Print E-mail
This Annuity Monitor report focuses on the literature order systems offered to financial professionals on the advisor site. In this report, we reviewed firms based on accessibility and design of the online literature interfaces, as well as the order process and depth of literature materials.
This Annuity Monitor report focuses on literature order systems offered on Annuity Monitor firms’ advisor websites. Nine firms were evaluated on three key criteria:
  • Accessibility and design components of the literature order interface
  • The order process for literature pieces from the order system
  • Depth of orderable materials offered on the advisor site
The Annuity Monitor firms covered in this report generally offer well-designed and easily accessible literature order systems on the advisor site. All but one firm, ING, utilizes a centralized location for ordering literature pieces and marketing materials. As a result, our assessments yielded high grades for many of the firms covered in this report. Hartford and SunLife Financial scored the highest in this report, with Hartford being awarded an A+ for its recently redesigned order system. Hartford was the lone firm in this report to offer a site demo that aids advisors who may be using the system for the first time. The firm also utilizes a number of literature pieces, including flyers, prospecting materials and product brochures.
 
Search options were plentiful across the firms surveyed in this report – 67% of firms allow users to search by keyword, and 78% offer title and item number search fields. Unfortunately, one category for which we would like to see improvement is the ability to search by audience (for public use, client or financial professional), as this capability was offered only by Pacific Life and Sun Life Financial. Categorizing literature according to audience enables advisors to prepare for their client meetings while observing FINRA and other regulatory guidelines. No firms received a failing grade in this report, as all firms with literature order systems scored strongly in one, or several aspects of the criteria.
 
Additional key findings include:
  • 44% of firms display the intended audience for literature pieces.
  • Over three quarters of the firms covered in this report provide order history functionality.
  • 55% of firms allow advisors to input or adjust the order quantity directly on the order interface.
 
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