Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:05 This is annuity Straight Talk. Since 2008, your host Brian Anderson, has helped clients nationwide navigate the complex market for annuities With Brian's assistance, hundreds of clients have achieved a profitable and secure retirement. I would know because Brian has answered many of my questions concerning annuities and retirement planning so that you can benefit as well. Let's get started. Here's Brian.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 Hello and welcome everyone to the Annuity Straight Talk podcast coming to you from Western Montana. Beautiful, beautiful late spring day really had a great, we had a cool spring. I was in Arizona, everybody knows that or most people do. And then when I got back the summer or the weather got nice, I thought, oh, this is perfect. The lake's starting to fill up. Snow's melting. Gonna be a gorgeous, gorgeous summer here. So just doing a quick new podcast today. I'm a little late so I don't know when this one's gonna come out, but I'm gonna give it a shot. You know, again, like I tell, I tell a lot of people, I don't like to put stuff out there for the sake of putting things out there. I like it to be good stuff, good content. And this question popped up in a couple meetings last week and one just yesterday.
Speaker 2 00:01:27 And so it just got me kind of thinking about it. The question being what annuities do you have <laugh>? It's always interesting to me, but a lot of people get it on their first call so they'll make an appointment with me and as appointments go, those of you that have talked to me, everybody's a little bit different. Sometimes we small talk for a while. Sometimes we have things in common, we want to touch base on those things. There's some people who want to jump right into it. And so aside from where you're from, how's the weather? We sometimes jump right into it. And this is something that happens more often than many people realize and it's just kind of my experience. But they'll say, all right, well what do you got? And so I think a lot of people are expecting me to jump into a sales pitch and that's not how I work.
Speaker 2 00:02:02 I've explained it a bunch so I don't think I can talk about it too much. There's a lot of new people, uh, people who have been around for re and need a reminder. But conditioning for this type of expectations among consumers I believe is des direct result of how 99% of advisors do business. But as I say all the time, and I think I have proved this pretty well by the information I put out, I'm different. And so this week I'm gonna take some, remind some time to remind everyone why. So the process of choosing an an whether to use an annuity is very simple. There are approximately three steps to it. That doesn't mean we're all done and wrapped up after three steps. But the first thing is I need to know your goals. So you can't just come in and ask me what annuities do you have because I don't know anything about you before we get started.
Speaker 2 00:02:43 So name a goal. Second, we determine whether an annuity can accomplish those goals along with the other alternatives you may have outside of an annuity. And if you decide, yeah, that annuity is a route I want to take, then we take another meeting typically and we'll look at the specific contracts that will get the job done. There are so many different annuities, all of 'em for a different purpose. So you can't just, I've always said it doesn't work for the, the guys that sell one contract or just a couple contracts sell it to everybody. There's a lot of people not getting what's optimal for their situation. But typically I don't, I don't propose a specific annuity until the second or third meeting. If we get it really into details on the first meeting, then during the second meeting we'll look at that and sometimes I'll do it, but a lot of times we wait to decide, yeah, an annuity is what I want to use and then it comes down to all sorts of different variables cuz we don't know.
Speaker 2 00:03:32 So it doesn't matter what I have. Uh, but a lot of people never get to the second meeting because there's no apparent match between my services and their preference. If they decide, yeah, this isn't right or maybe they don't like me, not everybody does. We do have to get along if we do business together. That's why I've made it a point to get this information out cuz I think there's a lot of people that has helped who have not done business with me and I'm fine with that. If you gimme a chance, uh, I appreciate you being honest with me. So I wrote a newsletter almost three years ago titled, I don't care if you buy an annuity. That was on August 28th, 2020 in the newsletter. There's a link to that if you want a reminder. But the point was to let everybody know that the purpose of the annuity is not something that should change my life.
Speaker 2 00:04:10 It should change yours if it makes things better for you, that's why you do it. What I do doesn't matter. So I'm never gonna put my short term desires or selfish interests ahead of yours. Haven't done it once. I'm not gonna ever do it in that newsletter. There's not a podcast for it. The numbers I shared indicated I recommended an annuity to less than half the people who contacted me for advice. I counted the number of appointments I had and the number of inbound phone calls cuz some people just call in, they don't make an appointment. And it was actually 43%. I read that newsletter, remember what it was? 43% of 'em said yeah, an annuity's probably a pretty good idea. That's, I think that's a fairly low number for people that are looking for annuity information and talking about retirement. So I'm not, I'm anything but aggressive and because I only talked to a relatively small fraction of people who find the website, I think it's about 20% of people who sign up or follow the website who I actually have a conversation with translates to a very small percentage of recommendations for all the people who consume this information for free.
Speaker 2 00:05:04 So that was number was of all the people that signed up, 8.6% of them got an annuity recommendation. The other 91.4% either were told that it doesn't or decided that they didn't want one. Maybe they bought it from someone else, but it wasn't me trying to push them into something whether they wanted it or not. It's an important point. But let's get back to the topic at hand. What annuities do I have? Well, the quick answers I have access to about anything that you could want. Define your goal. I will find the best solution. Uh, there are some things I can't get. There are some annuities I don't sell. But that doesn't stop me from making sure you have the best solution. If it means that you do business elsewhere, I am just fine with that because I don't really like to sell something that doesn't work for you.
Speaker 2 00:05:45 That is a very, very poor foundation upon which to build the lasting relationship. These are relationships we carry out for several years. So I have to recommend something I can live with and then I can can continue to justify over the years that it works for you. I have reasons for not selling certain things. Sometimes it's the company, sometimes it's the product. I've explained that in a lot of different ways in great detail. But it doesn't and it doesn't mean you have to see things my way. I think it's on uh, it's fair to have an honest communication from both sides. You and me both. If you tell me what you need and I provide something, if you don't like it, just tell me I can change my recommendations. I'm not gonna try to talk you into something you don't want. So an example of that is I don't sell variable annuity.
Speaker 2 00:06:22 So if you want a variable annuity, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not properly licensed to do it right now. I have in the past and I just don't do it anymore. I wrote about it and did a podcast on the topic last year in the newsletter. There's a link to that newsletter or the podcast, it was just about a year ago. And basically that's because I think you can get much more income, better performance and much lower fees with a combination of fixed annuities or index annuities and market investments. Now you don't have to say see things the same way as I do, but I justify it and I go to a great deal to explain why that is the case. It's fine with me if you don't agree. It's a beautiful thing if we can get along even whether or even if we don't agree.
Speaker 2 00:06:56 So there are a lot of reasons why certain agents sell, sell, whichever products they choose. It could. They could be motivated by money or complacency and I'm not trying to give that a negative connotation, but there are a lot of people who don't do as much research. There are a lot of local advisors, guys that have been in in this for a long time, kind of just do things the same way as they always have and don't go out and do the research and keep an eye on the market. These things are changing all the time and I think to be effective and give people viable options, it's very important that you continue to evolve as the market goes forward. As you said, the internet increased, customers had more or consumers had more opportunity to verify recommendations. That created a lot of confusion for people cuz it puts a retail consumer in charge of sifting through annuity, seeing what they mean, what their purpose is without doing it.
Speaker 2 00:07:42 I've talked about that as well. I think it's detrimental to you finding a solution cuz a lot of people get mixed up in it. When I make a recommendation it it is with a thought to what's available across hundreds if not thousands of annuities. Now again, there's classes of annuities and we find your purpose that narrows it down dramatically. It's not that I look at 500 every time, but I take a good look at what's new and what changes. I've been doing this for over 20 years. It's a lot easier for me to identify a solution to the specific problem and anybody who's relatively new at it has a significant disadvantage, especially if you're dealing with salespeople who are trying to push you in a specific direction. I spoke with one lady a few times in the past couple weeks having a really hard time figuring things out.
Speaker 2 00:08:25 Her brother is actually the agent and he says, buy this annuity. And she says, oh, I don't know about that. Okay, well then buy this one. Well, I'm not sure. Well then you should buy this one. There's no advising or recommending on that. That's just throwing darts at the wall and hoping to hit the bullseye one time. It was a good amount of money, so it was like your brother's making a bunch of money, you should do a little bit more work on this. Anyway, I've got another uh, newsletter and podcast that drive this idea home. In 2019, I wrote the newsletter How commissions Affect Annuity Sales and it talks about the financial motivation that drives sales practices. And then in the early days of the podcast, Asho and I recorded an episode titled Annuity Sales and Distribution basically covers the same points but in a different format talking about how wholesalers affect what products advisors see.
Speaker 2 00:09:12 I'm independent so I take little bits of information from everyone. I form my own opinion. So I do have all the products you might want and I don't know which it will be in the first minute of the conversation. Do not call and ask me. So what do you got? Because I need to know what you're trying to do. First said it before I sold annuities from nine different companies last year. It might be 10, I think it's nine though. And we're at that many this year with a few new that I've added based on the offers that they have. Whether you're looking for guaranteed income or just asset protection to accumulate assets safely, you gotta decide that before and that's the first step to setting a goal. What is your purpose for doing it? Some of the times it's easy to do it, especially in income cases.
Speaker 2 00:09:47 It's an objective comparison. If you're looking at for a multi-year fixed rate or a guaranteed income contract, it's pretty objective. This is what's available, what do you like? Other times it leans on a matter of opinion. So I have to justify it and explain to it and then I have to propose a few different ideas to see if you can wrap your head around it and understand the value of different options. You make the choice in the end. It's only my intent to make sure people buy with purpose and understanding. Meet your objectives, understand the contract you have and you're gonna be happy with it. Everybody that does that is satisfied with an annuity purchase. The people who are upset at an annuity purchase are the ones who didn't do that homework. They find out after the fact they should have worked a little bit harder and you don't have to work the all that hard.
Speaker 2 00:10:27 That's why I do all of this to explain so people are comfortable with the recommendations I make and I'm never gonna say, just trust me, but I'll work to prove to you that you can and make it a whole lot easier for you. Whether you get it for me is not something I require. As long as we're honest. If you call me for advice, say, yeah, I'm not gonna buy an annuity from me, but I could use some help. Fair enough, I'll give you the time that that deserves. It might not be hours upon hours of analysis and work, but that's better than a lot of people who have taken the hours saying they're gonna buy and then at the end saying, no, I don't wanna do business in person. I don't think that's fair to me because time is more important than money by a long shot.
Speaker 2 00:10:59 To me, I think you should buy an annuity from whomever gives you the best idea. That may be me, but I'm unique because I'll admit if it's not, if I can't give you the best deal, I'll tell you to go somewhere else. Give me an objective and I'll make it happen. The goal is simply to solve problems and make it easier for you. So this has been what annuities do I have and it's an open-ended question, not something I can answer quickly, but I hope you guys kind of understand a little bit more why that's the case. Please like, subscribe, follow or comment on any of your favorite podcast platforms or on the YouTube channel. I appreciate you guys following me and sharing this with anybody who you might think would benefit from the information. I enjoy doing it. It's not always easy to come up with fresh content, but I do what I can and it's coming to summertime so it's gonna get a little tougher and tougher for me if you can believe that. Anyway, I will see you next week with something new. Uh, gonna have John Bomber back, talk about the market. Got a client who's agreed to ajo me on the podcast to talk about an annual statement. We can cover some of that with people that haven't been here first and no, we're ready to keep rolling and I appreciate the opportunity to help you. You guys have a wonderful day and I will talk to you next time. Okay, bye.
Speaker 1 00:12:19 You have been listening to Annuity Stray Talk. The proceeding information is for informational and educational purposes only and does not represent tax, legal or investment advice. The views expressed by guests on this program are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of annuity, straight talk or its partners. No information presented today should be acted upon without meeting with the qualified and licensed professional. It's important that you read all insurance contract disclosures carefully before making a purchase. Decision guarantees are based on the financial strength and claims paying ability of the insurance company.
