NAVA and others want to streamline and standardize annuity sales procedures. The Association for Insured Retirement Solutions -- formerly the National Association for Variable Annuities, and still called NAVA for short -- and the Financial Services Institute (FSI) have teamed up to extend NAVA's "straight-through processing" (STP) initiative to the independent annuity distribution channel.

The idea is to help automate electronic annuity sales to the independent broker-dealer market.

"Independent broker-dealers and financial advisors play an important role in helping millions of Americans effectively plan for and achieve their retirement goals," says Dale Brown, president and CEO of FSI. "STP will help the independent channel effectively deliver suitable annuity products to clients by establishing an automated electronic sales process that is straightforward, efficient and accurate. It will also help ease the burden of an increasingly cumbersome regulatory environment, which is a key challenge facing our members today."

Channel specific

NAVA's STP initiative lays down a set of comprehensive standards that apply to the electronic management of annuities in an effort to create a transparent, compliant, regulated environment for annuities administration.

The STP is already backed by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association -- formerly the Securities Industry Association -- and the American Council of Life Insurers. The FSI, as the latest backer, will work to augment the standards by getting feedback on them from its network of broker-dealers. It will also work on a phased implementation plan that will allow for broad adoption of the standards.

NAVA's president and CEO Mark Mackey says that though the future of the STP initiative "depends upon the standardization of critical annuity business processes across and within all annuity distribution channels," it can't take "a 'one-size-fits-all' approach." As a result it's "critically important for NAVA to work closely with the FSI to identify a channel-specific STP implementation strategy to meet the unique needs of independent distributors."

The FSI is an Atlanta-based advocacy and membership organization with 110 broker-dealer member firms with over 130,000 independent brokers. This channel accounts for about 36% of all annuity sales.

NAVA provides educational and research services on fixed and variable annuities, income annuities, and variable life insurance. -FWR

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