Annuity Distributors Back Increased Agent Mobility

The firm is still trying to round up signatures for the online petition.

The history: In the past, typical life insurers had their own distribution organizations that recruited, hired, trained and supervised networks of career agents.

Today, many life insurers have eliminated career agent operations, and a policymaker belief that agents should offer clients the best products for their needs, regardless of the provider, has increased pressure on life insurers to favor independent distributors over career agency networks.

FMOs now provide many of the services that the career agency operations once provided, and officials at the U.S. Department of Labor have suggested that, eventually, if the department can implement a regulation imposing a fiduciary requirement on the agents involved in some annuity sales, FMOs and other marketing organizations would take the lead both in managing agents and in offering the agents large, broad, high-quality product menus.

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