The Next Sale Starts With the Last One
ACEO I once worked for had a line he delivered to every new hire, every town hall, every strategy session: “Every dollar in earnings started with a sale.” He wasn't wrong. He's still not wrong.
But here's what's changed: today, more and more often, the next sale starts with the service you delivered on the last one.
A $450 Billion Industry With a Paper Jam
The annuity industry is on an extraordinary run. Sales topped $434 billion in 2024 — the third consecutive record year. LIMRA projects the industry will surpass $450 billion in 2025, with eight consecutive quarters above $100 billion. Over 11,000 Americans turn 65 every day. Demand for protected income has never been higher.
The industry has become very good at selling. We need to be better at servicing.
Our industry obsesses over the point of sale. We build sleek quoting tools, streamline e-applications, and race to cut new business cycle times. And those investments matter. But once a policy or contract hits the books, the experience often falls off a cliff.
Need to change your address? Fill out a paper form. Want to transfer or roll over assets? Find a medallion signature guarantee — good luck with that on a Saturday. Try reallocating your subaccounts and it feels like renewing your license at the DMV.
These aren't edge cases. They're the everyday reality for millions of policyholders and the financial professionals and agents who serve them.
The Numbers Tell the Story
The friction isn't just annoying — it's expensive and it kills growth.
LIMRA research consistently shows that the number one obstacle preventing financial professionals and agents from selling annuities is the extensive paperwork and time it takes to process a transaction. Not product complexity. Not compensation. Paperwork.
On the post-issue side, the problem compounds. The average annuity transfer takes 18 days. Some take two to four weeks. Manual processes drive not-in-good-order (NIGO) rates as high as 60% on paper-based transactions, and 40% of policy servicing documents contain errors that halt processing entirely. Every NIGO creates a follow-up call. Every follow-up call erodes confidence. Every eroded confidence makes the next sale harder.
Think about that from the financial professional's perspective. They just placed a client into a product they believe in. The client calls three weeks later because a simple reallocation still hasn't gone through. The advisor spends 45 minutes on hold with a service center. Now ask that advisor how enthusiastic they are about placing the next client into that same product.
“The service experience after the sale is either building your distribution franchise or quietly dismantling it.”
The Industry Is Waking Up
The good news: real progress is happening.
The Insured for Retirement Institute's (IRI) Digital First for Annuities initiative deserves enormous credit for bringing carriers together to build common infrastructure where the industry has historically built only one-off workarounds. Working with DTCC, IRI members have created a paperless, carrier-to-carrier replacement process that has cut average transfer cycle times from 18 days to under 24 hours — a 94% reduction. IRI expects 14 carriers to be on the platform by the end of 2025.
As IRI's Katherine Dease put it: the industry has achieved more in two years than in the last twenty.
That's the power of thinking about the post-sale experience as a strategic priority rather than a back-office cost center.
From Cost Center to Growth Engine
This is where the real opportunity lives. Carriers that make post-issue servicing seamless — fast reallocations, digital address changes, frictionless transfers, real-time status visibility — aren't just reducing operational costs. They're doing something far more valuable: they're making financial professionals and agents want to bring them the next case.
In a market where annuity sales have nearly doubled in five years — from $219 billion in 2020 to $434 billion in 2024 — the carriers that win the next five years won't just be the ones with the best products or the highest caps. They'll be the ones that made their advisors' and agents' lives easier after the sale closed.
Zinnia is working closely with IRI on the Digital First initiative because we believe industry-wide standards are the foundation everything else gets built on. But standards alone aren't enough. We're also partnering with our clients — some of the largest carriers and distributors in the industry — to accelerate post-issue servicing and build the cross-company connections that make seamless experiences possible. Our platform ties the full lifecycle together, from product launch through distribution and into ongoing servicing, because the line between “sale” and “service” is artificial. The advisor's experience is one continuous thread, and any break in that thread costs you the next opportunity. Early results show post-issue processes like redemptions and withdrawals moving up to 60% faster than in the traditional model.
“The industry that figures out how to make post-issue servicing as smooth as the point of sale will own the next decade of growth.”
The Bottom Line
My old CEO was right. Every dollar in earnings does start with a sale. But the industry that figures out how to make post-issue servicing as smooth as the point of sale will own the next decade of growth.
The race is on. And for the first time in a long time, I like the odds.
Paul Tyler, Head of Industry Relations
Ready to transform your servicing experience?
See how Zinnia can help you turn post-issue operations into a distribution advantage.