Building an Insurance Company from Scratch

Paul Tyler (00:04) Hi, this is Paul Tyler, and welcome to another great episode of the L&A Hub. And today I've got a very special guest, one who has joined me on my other podcasts numerous times, Michelle Gordon, who is Chief Operating Officer for Axonic Insurance. Michelle, I... correct title, correct? Yes?

Michelle Gordon (00:28) You did it.

Paul Tyler (00:30) I did it. Okay.

Michelle Gordon (00:32) It's so much fun chatting with you, I'm so excited.

Paul Tyler (00:35) Oh, yeah! Yeah, well, it's wonderful. I think last time I talked to you on the other Dateless podcast, I think we were... you were doing an awful lot of very interesting consulting work for some interesting companies. Now, since then, a lot's changed.

Michelle Gordon (00:56) So much.

Paul Tyler (00:57) Talk to us about kind of what your role is, and we'll talk... we'll kind of jump into a little bit about the backstory.

Michelle Gordon (01:04) Well, one thing that changed is my last name since the last time I saw you, because I married my husband now. We've been together for a while, but we just got married, and I finally got through all the work of changing my name.

And before I describe my role, I would like to do the classic compliance disclaimer situation.

Paul Tyler (01:27) Please, by all means.

Michelle Gordon (01:27) I am going to say some very opinionated things, and those things are opinions of me. This podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not investment, legal, insurance, or tax advice. Those products or services about which I might speak might not be available in all states, and every listener deserves to get guidance from their own financial professional around their own personal situation.

So, with that done... now we can say...

Paul Tyler (02:00) Anything we want.

Michelle Gordon (02:03) And boy, will we.

Paul Tyler (02:06) Yeah. Yeah, okay.

Michelle Gordon (02:08) Oh my goodness. Alright, so I think, I think if there were...

Paul Tyler (02:11) No, I think, listen, if we had a ranking of, like, the most interesting voices in the annuity space, Michelle, you'd be way up there. Way up there. I think, you've... I mean, it's hard to describe what you've done. You've launched products, you've worked at insurance carriers, you've... of course, you're an actuary.

Michelle Gordon (02:34) Oh, you're not? I thought you were. I just play one on TV. I play it.

Paul Tyler (02:38) You do a very good job.

Michelle Gordon (02:41) I do math, I do lots of analytical stuff, but I've... I have an MBA, but I do not have...

Paul Tyler (02:46) Well, true or false, you actually have a patent in the insurance industry.

Michelle Gordon (02:54) That's true.

Paul Tyler (02:55) That's true. True.

Michelle Gordon (02:57) I have a patent in the wealth management domain, and I have a lot to say about the role that I think insurance plays in the wealth management domain, which is the liability minimization industry from my perspective.

Paul Tyler (03:12) Yes.

Michelle Gordon (03:12) Yeah, well... yeah.

Paul Tyler (03:16) Yeah, no, it's... I think this is something that's really interesting. I've talked to a bunch of asset managers, I was just at Refocus. And it's interesting, I've got a lot of money over here. I'd like to earn this kind of a spread. Oh, that sounds easy. Well, no, no, no, no, wait a second. We have this interesting function where we have assets and we have liabilities, and they've got to match. Go for it, Michelle.

Michelle Gordon (03:44) So, from the perspective of an insurance manufacturer, the world looks like the need to match assets and liabilities. But from the perspective of the consumer who's choosing to purchase insurance, and from the perspective of the state regulators that oversee the manufacturing and the distribution of insurance, they're looking at the world as if insurance is — and it rightly is — the liability minimization industry, right?

You have to have insurable interest to purchase a life insurance policy on a person. There has to be a named annuitant in an annuity policy, and that's all because it's about the human experience. Not just about maximizing a pile of assets. Insurance is about minimizing liabilities for the people that are insured on the policy.

Paul Tyler (04:38) Yeah, it's... I mean, it's kind of a cool business to be in. You know, like you say, we're not just adding coins to the pile. We actually know what the use is on the other end, and we've got to make sure that the...

Michelle Gordon (04:51) We have to know, and that really does differentiate us from the investment advisement industry. And so, you know... you know that I have some feelings about the regulatory framework and how it defines financials under the lens of investment. I just can't say that I agree with that.

Paul Tyler (05:23) Yeah, well, before we go into this, go in, because I think it'll be interesting, you've actually had a chance... you have a chance in this job to really kind of reinvent a lot of things, right? Because Axonic Insurance, brand new company, you have a chance to create new products.

Michelle Gordon (05:45) Products and services.

Paul Tyler (05:47) And services. And so I guess, let's talk about, you know, let's talk about how you look at the regulatory framework, but I'd really like to walk into okay, you've had some great ideas, really unique insights, and they've had an opportunity to actually build something from scratch. So, we'll start at the hard part, and then connect to the... I think, the story that'll be really rewarding. So, you know, start of the talk. Talk to us about your, you know, the world.

Michelle Gordon (06:17) Well, does the world mean Axonic Insurance?

Paul Tyler (06:21) Yes.

Michelle Gordon (06:22) The world should be seen through the lens of my employer. No, so Axonic Insurance was formed by my husband, Michael Gordon, and he's been thinking about how to create a decoupled infrastructure that supports insurance for probably 20 years now, that I know about, at least.

And he started brainstorming with Axonic Capital about the possibility of creating this company more than 10 years before it actually got created. He and Clay DiGiacinto, who formed Axonic Capital, which has expertise in the structured credit space, they started talking, yeah, easily a decade before they launched this business that has now supported — in 2025, we supported the issuance of more than $2 billion of MYGAs and FIAs.

We had, at the close of 2025, more than 6,000 agents appointed. And we raised $210 million in preferred equity from LuminArx and Deutsche Bank at the end of last year.

So, Michael and Clay were strategizing for easily a decade before they determined to launch this business. And I was doing consulting at the time, and intended to stay there. And then Michael formed this really exciting operation that was doing TPA services, doing reinsurance, doing a collaboration between independent distribution and a carrier — AmFirst Insurance Company that is A- rated by AM Best.

And these ideas all came together, and values of really long-term partnership, commitment to the industry. They fleshed this out in a back room for several years before starting to launch this, and yeah, I was watching it in my living room as it was happening, and Michael asked me, well, could you, you know, do a couple of weeks... couple hours a week of consulting? Well, sure, okay, that turned into, like, you know, a few more, and then I was like, oh goodness, I couldn't possibly not be a part of this. This is amazing. I've just never seen... never seen something quite like it.

Paul Tyler (09:06) Well, no, no, I think... I think what you've built is outstanding. I've seen a lot of companies, you know, or I... it's interesting, I've seen a lot of people in the asset management world get the capital together, which is hard enough. Then, you know, realize, oh, it's not that easy to buy a shell, buy a, do it launch a Greenfield Insurance Carrier. Timeframes have either gone too long for the capital or the patience, and... or they get to the end, and they've got the insurance, but it's like, oh, now we gotta get at the distributors and do the sales.

So I think, you've... you know, first of all, congratulations, because, I mean, to get to a $2 billion sales level, a company that nobody heard about, knew about, you know, and in a couple of years. I know there's a lot of planning, and it's just outstanding.

Well, but talk about it, like, how is this interesting? You obviously have been here since the inception. But if you're an employer on this, how is this, you know, what you're building linking to your passion for how the, you know, we should... the industry should start, or the regulators should start looking differently at the insurance industry.

Michelle Gordon (10:15) Well, I mean, that's a great question, and I think, you know, across our organization, we see ourselves as in it for the long term, and that is how insurance people do view the world. You know, the investment advisory world is meant to be liquid and it's meant to be the case that investors have the ability to move their money when they want and need to.

Whereas the insurance industry is meant to be a long-term commitment kind of industry. So, but that doesn't mean all of the negative things that people think about insurance and it being categorized as transactional at the point of sale, or that, you know, people's motivations who work and have that expertise in that space are not considered as pure as are the motivations of somebody who's entitled to self-identify as a fiduciary financial advisor.

We don't agree. Just, we don't agree with the perception that the insurance industry does operate that way, and we are seeking to put our money where our mouth is by building infrastructure. You know, we built our company from scratch. We built our own technology infrastructure on AWS, like our own admin system. That's not a thing that...

Paul Tyler (11:41) Wait, wait, wait, okay, we'll come back to that. We'll come back to that.

Michelle Gordon (11:45) Yeah, I'm sure. It's an interesting story.

So in any case, you know, we don't agree that insurance belongs as transactional. We also don't agree that it belongs disintegrated from financial planning. And I don't agree that investment advising is the correct lens under which to regulate financial planning, because I think that financials are much more expansive than investments are.

Paul Tyler (12:21) Yeah. And now, and I apologize for not asking you, are you selling primarily through the independent advisors, or you're also selling through RIAs and the Wealth Channel at this point?

Michelle Gordon (12:36) We are well... this is a great opportunity for me to plug the relationship that we're building with Zinnia, because when we get our AN4 instance set up, we'll be better enabled to integrate with the financial services community more broadly, because they have a tendency to use that infrastructure. But so we're still in that process. We're pretty close.

But we have another, we're set up with another eApp provider that is well integrated, two others, that are well integrated into the IMO channel, and our primary distribution partnership is with AmeriLife, which is one of the leading IMOs in this country.

So we primarily have distributed through AmeriLife, and we are expanding into the financial institution channel from there.

Paul Tyler (13:32) Okay, yeah, interesting. Yeah, yeah, AmeriLife's a great, great company. I've worked with a number of the people, you know, there over the years at AmeriLife, and then, you know, prior.

Let me ask you, as you're... so, how is your, the way you look at the industry, Michelle, shaped the product design, you know, or the way you're going to market?

Michelle Gordon (13:58) Yeah, I would say, you know, I think that... well, we have a very advanced senior team over here, so I wouldn't say that I'm the only person who's influenced product or service design. We have our chief financial officer, Rob Painter, has 30, probably, years of experience in the industry, and our Chief Distribution Officer is probably more like 50 years of experience in the industry, Les Sutherland.

But so I think all of us have really brought our respective viewpoints to the table and our relationships to the table to design products that we think are interesting, and that we think will stay on the books, right? From the manufacturer's perspective, we're best served when we're able to create product and service experiences that cause the clients to want to stay with us over the long term.

So we're very, you know, just very focused on creating designs that are understandable, and training, working with the financial professionals who are appointed to sell our products. We don't just walk away at the moment of appointment. We do — and this is, certainly, this is true of plenty of other manufacturers — but we, like others, we do lots of educational content for those who are appointed with us.

And we just added an interesting Bitcoin-oriented index to our...

Paul Tyler (15:31) Oh, interesting.

Michelle Gordon (15:32) It was so cool, because it's in partnership with NASDAQ, so we were able to get an advertisement in Times Square on the NASDAQ building when that index went live earlier this week, actually.

Paul Tyler (15:47) I like that.

Michelle Gordon (15:48) Even as a native New Yorker, it's extra cool to see the Times Square billboard.

Paul Tyler (15:53) Oh, that, you know, that's really interesting. Last company, Michelle, just a side note, we would survey our agents and ask them each year, you know, kind of put a voice of the agent survey out, and one of the questions was, recurring questions was, you know, what indices would you want? And, you know, I kept putting Bitcoin... it kind of moved, kind of moved, kind of moved, but I'm not surprised that you're doing this now, because I think a lot more people, especially, you know, in the markets we're selling, understand, I think the possibilities of cryptocurrency. We'll forget about the last couple weeks. My Bitcoin hasn't done so well. But.

Michelle Gordon (16:36) Well, I mean, but that... you're making the point as to why people are thinking that it could be an interesting index inside of a protected structure for some people, for some portion of their portfolio, because you do have that protection against the downside, and yet you won't have full participation in the upside. There are some people who feel like that's an interesting way to gain exposure to that asset class.

Paul Tyler (17:05) Well, or put, yeah, completely non-correlated assets into a portfolio, which is getting harder and harder, you know, to do these days.

But yeah, well, talk to us about the company, because now, you know, it's interesting, you mentioned Les Sutherland. You know, Les and I worked together, you know, I don't know, 20 years ago at MetLife, when we had, like, 20,000...

Michelle Gordon (17:26) Pass along his regards.

Paul Tyler (17:27) Yeah, he's great. You know, we worked at a company where you had, like, 20,000 people running an insurance company. Now you've had a chance to do it from scratch. How have you rethought, you know, the operations of an insurance company, without having to deal with, you know, a lot of the headaches of a legacy environment?

Michelle Gordon (17:47) Great, great question. We are very intentionally very lean, and currently at about 125 employees. Hiring as fast as we can to accommodate the fact that we're currently 30% ahead of our stretch plan for 2026, so the operations, compliance, sales, HR, all teams are on all cylinders right now, trying to keep up with the fact that we're hiring as fast as we can.

And we do post on LinkedIn, so if anything that I'm saying sounds interesting to any of listeners here today, please consider following us on LinkedIn and recommending those job posts to people you care about.

So in any case, we're 125 employees now. Will be probably materially more than that before the end of the year. We made the intentional decision to start by using vendors. So when Michael and Clay first designed the structure for this company, they considered buying another company. Considered that for a little while, and then as they thought through what that pricing looked like relative to what it would look like if Michael were given a wallet and a whiteboard, they decided wallet and whiteboard.

And so we intentionally used vendors for a period until we could get ourselves scaled up enough to bring in-house the people who would support each function. But those things that are... that we think are strategic imperatives to an organization, we took in-house.

So we think operating is important to our organization. We hired... we have 50-plus professionals in the operations department now. We've got 20 professionals in the compliance area, and we've got a number of people in the distribution area.

We obviously were not going to be able to distribute ourselves. We chose a strategic partnership with AmeriLife based on Les' relationships. And we chose to work with AmFirst as the carrier that would issue the contracts that we could design because of that alignment of long-term family values. They're a family organization, just as ours is.

We... I mentioned that our CEO is my husband, and we've got a material portion of our workforce to date is related somehow to somebody else in the organization, or worked for a really long time with somebody there. People just referred in people they trusted, and two years in, we haven't yet had a voluntary departure.

We've sought to build a culture that is... we try to be aligned with, you know, the fact that this is a long-term business. We don't expect people to work so hard and not participate in the long term of the organization. So we're really intentional about our relationships, both with distribution and with our own employees and such, that we have found ourselves blessed with so many applications for those jobs that we're recruiting for, and so many financial professionals choosing to work with us.

Paul Tyler (21:37) So, it was interesting. So, secret to success, starting an insurance company from scratch: be patient. Sounds like know your partners well.

Michelle Gordon (21:43) Be ready to weather many storms, because on any given day, what the priority is will change 10 times, and we all just have to be ready to move on a dime.

Paul Tyler (21:57) Yeah, no.

Michelle Gordon (21:57) You have to have trusted co-workers, in order...

Paul Tyler (22:00) Culture, culture, incredibly, incredibly important.

Sounds like you've also been, as you say, very careful in terms of who you work with. I don't hear you say we're selling to 20 through 20 IMOs. It's... you've kind of picked one organization, or a handful of organizations, and aligned yourself there.

Michelle Gordon (22:21) We don't want to have loosely coupled primary relationships. Where we need to use vendor services, we have multiple vendors that provide the same service, so that we can pivot if we need to. But where we have strategic imperatives, like who's issuing the policy and who's distributing the policy, that's where we have commitment. We are not dating.

Paul Tyler (22:50) No, I love it. Now, I've got to double-click into one of those comments, because I actually emailed you when I heard about, you know, kind of what your company was doing from somebody out at Refocus. So, you built your own policy admin system. Now, 10 years ago, Michelle, you'd say, what? Talk to me about this, you know, we're in such a new world today.

Michelle Gordon (23:15) So, yes, I mean, that is... it's a bold move, right? It's a really bold move to say, we're gonna start from scratch on having built our own system. So you have to either be really confident, or you have to have done it before. And in our case, a little bit of both.

Michael was successful in recruiting, as our Chief Technology Officer, a gentleman named Josu, who is, who... with whom he's worked for 25 years. And, you know, 15 years ago, we had built an ecosystem on AWS, when I was employed by a Fortune 100 mutual life insurance company, and that company, we in 2010, we were on the cloud.

Having built, even referred to a patent that I received, based on that intellectual property. We had built, back then, an architecture for weaving annuities and life insurance and holistic lifetime wealth ecosystems through that company's career registered investment advisors and broker reg reps, that were also career agents of that company.

So we had tested some aspects of how one would accomplish on the cloud, and on the cloud back in 2010. It was a completely different story from on the cloud today.

Paul Tyler (24:52) Right.

Michelle Gordon (24:52) It was a battle at the time. So there had been some testing of knowing that there... the skill set of the individuals involved was going to be possible to do this, so the important thing was a theme that I keep echoing. It's recruiting the right people.

So Michael was successful in getting Josu to commit to helping build this architecture, and he's been heads down. He's hired a team of people, and they have built this admin system that supports — we're more likely than not going to do more than twice the business this year that we did last year.

Paul Tyler (25:36) Yeah, I think, listen, I was early to the cloud with the startup I did, and then, it was interesting, you know, getting... Michelle, it was so controversial back in, like, 2011, 2012, just to go into the cloud. I had a... one of the companies I worked with, I think had the nameless CTO actually come in and leave a bad story about the cloud on the CEO's chair when he knew I was, like, using a little S3 bucket for something.

Now, fast forward, it's like, you're not in the cloud, what's wrong with you? Right.

Michelle Gordon (26:13) That's true.

Paul Tyler (26:13) I... and, you know, I think... I just...

Michelle Gordon (26:16) Speaks to the visionary nature of my husband.

Paul Tyler (26:19) It does. Well, it does. So I... like, companies who want to do business with a new company like this, I mean, you really changed the paradigm. Like, what's core, what's... I'd like to be interested to hear, like, what is not core for your company today? Policy admin system, you thought, oh, that would have been a giant nameless vendor. Wouldn't touch it.

Michelle Gordon (26:44) But then you'd be... we would have been number 1,000 in their list of priorities on their...

Paul Tyler (26:51) Right.

Michelle Gordon (26:51) And that's exactly the problem, right? Is those things that cause the... either the consumer's experience or the financial professional's experience are those things that we have to control.

Paul Tyler (27:03) So what wouldn't you control at this point? What are the functions that are not? Very curious to know, I think, like, if you have a chance to build something from scratch, how would you do it? I wouldn't make it... I wouldn't recreate an old insurance company.

Michelle Gordon (27:18) Right. We didn't hire our own distribution. We formed a partnership. We purchased a carrier that is in Texas only. It is not currently issuing contracts. I don't know if or when. At some point, probably, that will be expandable and could prove an entity from which we use for issuance, but in the near term, it was very clear we weren't... it wasn't the right strategy to form our own insurance company.

Instead, we went looking for appropriate partners, and we have formed our own reinsurer. We believe you have to have that in the ecosystem, but we rely on other reinsurers to support our insurer and reinsurer.

We... so we rely... I mentioned that anytime we need to have those relationships where we can't perform the function ourselves, like reinsurance, or like eApp. We work with multiple vendors so that we're not stuck with one, you know, that where we're number 10,000 in the queue.

Paul Tyler (28:29) Right, right. So, distribution... not core...

Michelle Gordon (28:36) Distribution is core, we just can't control it ourselves.

Paul Tyler (28:39) You can't control yourself.

Michelle Gordon (28:40) We partnered exclusively.

Paul Tyler (28:44) Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, the pipes, you know, thank you very much, by the way, for the nice plug for our company. The pipes going into the various companies, you need that. And, but this is a contained company. I mean, you know, who answers your phones? When I call Axonic Insurance? Is it an Axonic Insurance employee?

Michelle Gordon (29:07) Yes. Yes, it is.

Paul Tyler (29:09) You know, where does AI fit in all of this for your company? I have to ask you this question.

Michelle Gordon (29:14) Well, we had an interesting experience with AI here, Paul, you and me, because we... when we were prepping for this podcast, we asked AI to tell us what should we talk about, and it was terrifyingly astute in its capabilities.

So we're not yet using AI. I think that any company that is going... or I should say, not materially. We have an AI use policy, we have people doing generic things like job descriptions, for example, using AI, but we don't put proprietary data into AI yet. But it's coming.

And I think, you know, I think it's coming fast. I think AI has capabilities that, if you haven't used it yet, you need to... you need to stop listening to this episode... listen to the episode that you recorded with Ash, which was yeah, remarkably eye-opening, to get some experience with AI.

So we're not yet materially using it, but I think the industry is moving in that direction of getting ready to use it. And I certainly am getting myself educated, because I do think AI is a big part of all of our futures.

Paul Tyler (30:40) Yeah. Alright, well, the last topic, which... oh, it'll only take us a few minutes here, Michelle.

Michelle Gordon (30:46) Policy, right? Patient listeners.

Paul Tyler (30:51) I know, a couple years ago, you know, we had, you know, this thing called the Department of Labor making these... about to make these changes, the structure imposing fiduciary rule. You had no strong opinions at that point, but no. So, so, so.

Michelle Gordon (31:07) I'm looking at stuff.

Paul Tyler (31:09) Yeah, and I will disclaim, this has nothing to do with Axonic Insurance, or even Zinnia, for that matter, but I'm just curious, like, what is your take on the future of regulation of insurance. You know, we've certainly got a different administration, very different set of priorities.

I would say on the positive side, I think, you know, I like what they're doing with cryptocurrency, I think there are a lot of... a lot of real positives on the... listen, I love technology, I think, on the AI front.

Where do you see the regulation happening now? And then, you know, if we should get another regime, you know, where do you think it'll head next? You know, will the DOL come back?

Michelle Gordon (31:55) I think, you know, I think the current environment is a deregulatory one in general, so I don't have near-term expectations of a revival of the four times failed since 2010 framework that the Department of Labor attempted to implement. I don't think that is likely to be revived under this administration.

If a democratic administration comes into effect again, I think there's gonna be an intention to consider how, you know, financial... what responsibility do financial professionals have when they interact with qualified money?

And the government performs tax qualification for a reason. It has the intention that you're saving for retirement. Saving to provide retirement income.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, ERISA, is like, literally has retirement income in the name, so it's very clear that the objective of... and the vast majority of assets, tax-qualified assets, that are collected as tax-qualified come in through ERISA originally. So it's very clear that the intention is retirement income.

But the problem with the regulatory framework as I see it, is that, well, there's more than one, but the one about which I'm really passionate — there isn't an identity for a retirement income advisor, or for an insurance advisor, or for a financial advisor that is not governed by the Investment Advisors Act.

And I personally really sincerely disagree with the SEC's 1987 interpretation that financial planning belongs under the Investment Advisors Act. I think it very materially harms the American retirement saver. I think it materially harms the insurance industry, and it's incorrect. And I also think it causes the government to wind up not receiving the tax revenue that it would like to receive.

Because the incentivization for a fiduciary financial advisor is typically on assets under management. About 80% of compensation received by a person who's qualified to identify as a fiduciary financial advisor is received by virtue of a percentage of AUM.

So when that's the compensation structure, and there isn't a legal requirement when one represents oneself as a fiduciary under the Investment Advisors Act, one doesn't specifically have a requirement to determine how might these funds last throughout the indefinite lifespan of the person who's aiming to provide themselves with lifetime retirement income.

So when that fiduciary financial advisor is compensated the vast majority of the time via AUM, they don't have an incentive to introduce liability minimization vehicles.

That's a regulatory mistake, because wealth equals assets minus liabilities, and that's not my opinion, that's literally the definition of the term, right? And so since that's the definition of wealth, it couldn't possibly be the case that wealth manager and asset manager could be synonyms.

But they are regulated as if they were, because that decision was made in 1987. So I really feel like the insurance industry and the people... people who might be listening to this podcast might be employees of an insurance company, those people might be represented by industry lobbying groups.

And what if there's validity to this concern that compensation through the lens of AUM for those entitled to identify as fiduciary financial advisors creates that disincentivization to use the vehicles that our industry creates? And it prevents our people from holding that identity of fiduciary financial advisor, right?

Because the perspective is that the person who has that title is the person who is an investment advisor representative of a registered investment advisor operating under the 40 Act, the Investment Advisors Act.

I just, as I said many times, I disagree. I really disagree. The best thing for America.

I don't think it's the best thing for the government, because if it were the case that there were codification of insurance advisor, or retirement income advisor, or financial advisor that's not regulated under the investment advising lens, it would come to be the case that compensation could occur via income under advisement, rather than exclusively assets under management. So that would align with the objective of tax qualification in the first place.

And if a fiduciary advisor were compensated on the basis of generating income under advisement, then what would occur is that people would take more income from their tax-qualified accounts while they're alive, which would result in governmental tax revenue that they're not experiencing, because people are routinely being advised to leave those assets, and they get passed on to heirs.

And that's why in the SECURE Act we had that 10-year stretch requirement, you know, that the accounts now have to be drained in 10 years when they're inherited, because people were taking advantage of that tax deferral for as long as they could. And that makes a lot of sense for that consumer, right? And especially if it makes sense given the compensatory framework for the financial professional, but are we sure that what we want as a society?

Paul Tyler (38:40) No, well, it's interesting, in the summer, last summer, I did a series of focus groups with... Michelle, you would have loved it, probably 10 RIAs, some large ones that had been, you know, acquiring different firms and are trying to build something, you know, bigger networks.

And they're very interested in insurance, very interested, because I think they recognize that their clients — they've got to look at the liabilities, you know, for their clients, and Michelle, they know they have to help them with create streams of retirement income.

There are a lot of gyrations to get over, well, how do we get paid for this? You know, then for all the reasons you're describing. It was very interesting. The other obstacle was just the fear factor, Michelle, and I think you kind of alluded to it earlier, in terms of making products accessible, understandable.

A lot of them just expressed to us that they needed help themselves, feeling comfortable, not even selling the insurance, but even presenting the concepts. So I think, I think you've got a big market ahead of you.

Michelle Gordon (39:59) And rightly so, right? Because these are professionals who've been trained over a long period of time to see the world through the lens of the left-hand side of the balance sheet, and they've been trained and also to see the world from the lens of the consumer that they're serving, right?

But there's just some weird... there's a weird disconnect going on between how they experience their compensation and the goals that they're absolutely... they're very... of hearts, I know, aiming to accomplish for their clients. They... this disconnect occurs in its entirety, in my view, because of this regulatory interpretation that I feel the insurance industry should consider fighting.

The Trump administration has been very clear about its desire that for every piece of new legislation or new interpretive guidance that comes out, 10 be removed. So, why isn't this one a candidate for removal?

Paul Tyler (40:46) I agree. Hey, well, listen, it's late. Thank you for hanging with me. Michelle, okay, our listeners should, number one, follow you on LinkedIn, number two, follow Axonic Insurance.

Michelle Gordon (41:00) AxonicInsurance.com.

Paul Tyler (41:01) On LinkedIn.

Michelle Gordon (41:04) Yeah, and LinkedIn.

Paul Tyler (41:04) Yes, LinkedIn, and send this podcast to all your friends, okay?

Michelle Gordon (41:09) That's what I want, and...

Paul Tyler (41:11) Listen, good luck, Michelle. You know, I want to have you back, I want to hear more about how your business model evolves, how you're using technology, also the product designs. I think you've got a lot of... all the pieces together to make a really successful, you know, build a successful business here. So, congrats, thank you.

And should people reach out? If people want to connect with you, what's the best thing to do? LinkedIn? Is that your preferred connection? Okay.

Michelle Gordon (41:39) And my email is on my LinkedIn profile, and they should absolutely follow Axonic and share.

Paul Tyler (41:46) Okay, excellent. Alright, thank you, and thanks to our listeners, and we'll see you next week for another great episode of the L&A Hub. Thanks.