Buying an annuity can be both challenging and very important. It is surprising how some people work for 40 years, save their entire lives, and then deposit their money into an annuity with little consideration. When buying an annuity, it's crucial to understand that the person selling it often works for an insurance marketing organization that prioritizes agent compensation over client contract attributes.

Moreover, the biggest insurance marketing organizations are often owned by insurance companies themselves. This means that their product recommendations tend to favor the products offered by their parent company, limiting your options. Agents must then decide which products to present, and commission is typically a significant consideration.

We prioritize our clients' goals and objectives over commissions. If we wouldn't buy the contract ourselves or for our own portfolio, we wouldn't recommend it to our clients. Our backtesting is done in a customized fashion by people who have been trained to load accurate data to get accurate results. We also stress that annuities are not "set it and forget it" if you want to maximize your return over the years. We need to pay attention to how the annuity contributions are being managed within the fixed indexed annuity.

After 40 years in this industry, I firmly believe that distribution chain issues are the biggest reasons why people don't end up purchasing the annuity that's best for their application. Additionally, people who sell stocks, bonds, and mutual funds are often biased against annuity products that have surrender charges, while those who sell annuities are biased against securities. This creates dissension instead of synergy.

Another problem with annuities is that many times, the agent or entity selling the annuity is much less proactive in servicing the contract after the point of sale than they were in acquiring the sale in the first place. However, the good news is that the insurance company pays a salesperson to sell you the annuity. You do not need to feel obligated to an agent as if they are working for free. They will be paid by the company that you choose.

The Averill Family annuity purchase methodology has been real-time testing products as they hit the street from the outside, and we have separated those into two categories. We probably do not make all annuity products available to the general public. If I could not look my father in the eye and tell him that I would purchase that annuity if I were the person buying it myself, we will not offer it. Other people can and will sell that product. We prioritize our clients' satisfaction and strive to retain our happy clients' status.