Financial Independence Group, a company that connects independent financial advisors with insurance products, is using technology originally developed by Goldman Sachs to power a new advisor dashboard that brings together annuities with structured investments.
The new platform, dubbed Quinci, aims to be a one-stop-shop for advisors to access a digital marketplace of fixed and registered insurance, and structured investment products. Quinci also includes educational materials, financial planning tools, product execution and ongoing business management.
FIG built Quinci in partnership with Simon Markets, a structured investments wealthtech spun out of Goldman Sachs in 2018. Simon secured a $100 million investment in July, which valued the company at $800 million, to expand into new types of investment products, such as private equity, hedge funds and cryptocurrencies,
In addition to Simon’s planning tools, Quinci also integrates with popular financial planning tools like eMoney and MoneyGuide.
“As the insurance and investment industries continue to converge, the need for a single platform to manage all product lines for a financial professional is greater than ever before. Quinci was born with this specific outcome in mind,” Andrew Barnett, FIG’s director of software engineering, said in a statement.
The partnership also boosts the value that FIG can offer financial advisors. According to FIG co-CEO Jim Cooper, Quinci is the first software to offer insurance planning, variable annuities and structured notes in a single dashboard.
“The idea is no matter who you are or what licensure you have, you can now log onto one centralized location to get educated, backtest, purchase and see real-time values on everything from a structured note to a fixed-income annuity,” Cooper said in an email.
While independent financial advisors have traditionally avoided annuities,
“Annuities get a bad rap at times and have been completely misunderstood by some over the years,” Cooper said. “I believe that both clients and financial professionals are beginning to ignore what they may have heard in the past and are waking up to the fact that annuities can indeed be a great tool as part of a financial plan. There are a number of benefits to an annuity, but the ability to provide guaranteed lifetime income is certainly at the top of the list.”
At the same time, annuities providers are investing more in technology that appeals to investment advisors and makes it easier for insurance agents to offer financial planning and wealth management. For example,
It’s all part of a trend of insurance-backed broker-dealers trying to tap into the growing market of independent financial advisors, said Mitchell Wein, head of financial services executive partner service at Aite-Novarica.
“If you’re a carrier and you want to recruit these [independent] advisors to your broker-dealer, you have to come up with a way to support the tools that the wirehouses typically support,” Wein said. “A lot of the carriers, they’re looking to create consistency around the digital experiences the independents have.”
What remains to be seen is how a company like FIG will differentiate Quinci from these other fintechs on the market, especially ones directly integrated with insurance providers. Traditional investment products have different licensing requirements and oversight than annuities, and bringing the data together on a single platform is difficult, Wein said. There’s also the issue of creating truly easy-to-use digital experiences for advisors to apply for annuities with the insurance providers.
“There are a lot of products out there, and the reality is … it’s hard to bring everything together the way that Quinci is trying to do,” Wein said. “It's not clear how this solution addresses those issues or not.”
