The annuity sales process is favored among many financial professionals due to its timely transaction. You have the ability to get paid in a matter of days. However, you may often times find yourself in a situation where days turn into months. And it's usually because of one or two little things you could've easily avoided from the beginning.

In this episode of Money Script Monday, Adam presents three ways to quickly expedite your annuity cases from submitted to paid.

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Video transcription

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Money Script Monday. My name is Adam Reyna and I'd like to thank you for attending.

Today's topic is how to get you paid on annuity business faster. This one is for the financial professional only.

I'm really excited about this topic, because the buzz around the industry right now is protected income, filling that income gap for pre-retirees, pulling some chips off the table.

And we know that an annuity is one of the best ways to do that, along with your Social Security, and maybe some cash value life insurance.

But, for the most part, a lot of your clients have those big qualified accounts. Now is the time to be talking about annuities.

If you're watching this video, there are three (3) types of situations you may be in:

(1) Doing All of Your Business with LifePro: This video will serve as a great reminder for you.

(2) Doing Business with LifePro, But Not Writing Annuities: This video will be a good starting point for you to start working on annuity cases.

(3) Not Currently Doing Business with LifePro: If you are working with a different GA or IMO, I hope they are doing these types of things for you because we really put the white gloves on and do this on every case.

With that said, let's get started.

The three things that we need to work on for an annuity case to make it go through quickly are suitability, getting you appointed, and using the e-apps and transfers.

Suitability

For the suitability check, it's really straightforward. You want to do your research in the beginning.

We don't want this app to show up at the insurance company for $500,000, and we find out that they're not liquid enough, and then we only get approved for $300,000. That just makes for an awkward conversation with your client, and of course, creates extra work.

What we would do on the front-end is go ahead and get a fact finder. Get all the information for your client. Be that fiduciary.

The things that we need to run our suitability check are listed here.

We're going to need your client's age, what the premium looks like, income and expenses, which determines their disposable income, what their liquidity looks like, the total value of annuities in the household, and their net worth.

That's all we need to run our suitability check.

We can give you a green light right then and there and let you know that, when this app shows up at the insurance company, it will be approved.

Pretty simple there.

We can also work on different products where the source of funds is coming from. But let's do that front-end work to make sure we get approved.

Once we deem a case suitable, now we need to get you ready to write this case.

E-App

Once we get you appointed, which I would recommend doing right away, because sometimes that can take 7 to 10 business days, and we want to use e-applications on just about every case.

I'll tell you probably within about two years, you will not be writing paper apps anymore. Everybody's really trying to get that e-app created and launched, because it's so efficient and really beneficial for everybody.

We want to get you appointed right away.

Get your product training done. An easy 10, 15-minute training.

Make sure your continuing education with the state is current.

And then you've got to get your login and password, and probably do a practice run with that e-app so when you're in front of that client, everything goes smoothly.

Because again, if your client's ready to make a buying decision, if they're worried about having their money in the market, if they want to take some chips off the table and start creating protected income, we don't want them to have to wait. We want to be able to go right then and there and get that app started.

Once we're suitable, we have that app in, now comes the toughest part.

Transfer

If you've ever written annuity business, you know that getting the money from a financial institution can sometimes be one of the toughest parts.

We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

As you are getting through this process - with suitability checks and applications - at some point, we have to gather up all the statements and figure out where that money sits and how we're going to get it out of there.

I always recommend making a phone call with the client because, of course for security purposes, you can't just call that institution and start asking questions.

Schedule a time before lunch. Take a half hour and make a phone call to that financial institution.

Reason being is we want to uncover all the requirements right there. Because our other option is to send the app in and let the insurance company send the transfer packet to that firm.

If there is something missing, it goes back to the insurance company and then they have to communicate with us.

It can add weeks, sometimes a month, to the case.

So, why not go after those funds ourselves?

Agent ordered funds is what we would call it.

So, when we're making those calls, we just tell them:

"We're going to move this money to an insurance company where we're going to buy an annuity. What do we need to do?"

"If it's a 401(k), do we need to sell off some positions?"

"Is it a mutual fund that we just need to make a phone call and they put it into a liquid position and they transfer it with a form?"

"Do we have to request the funds online? Is it done over the phone?"

What I'm getting at there is that they're all a lot different, so the best thing to do is make a call to that company, so we can get those funds transferred over and get you paid sooner.

I know that was quick and easy, but we get a suitability check on the front-end, then get you appointed so your clients don't have to wait, and then we go after those funds ourselves.

Here's to a great push at the end of the year for annuity business!