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The Future of DC Wholesaling: Technology, Marketing to Drive Success


Technology and marketing, with external wholesalers working in concert with internals, marketing and product people as well as key accounts, will benefit the highly productive “star” wholesalers in the future, while mediocre professionals will be ferreted out, says industry insider Fred Barstein.


For a feature article published in the Spring 2015 issue of NAPA Net the Magazine, Barstein spoke to numerous advisors and wholesalers, along with both current and former industry execs, who agreed that technology and increased financial literacy will push overpaid and underperforming professionals out of the industry, while rewarding those who can best utilize data and marketing to grow their business and earn advisors’ trust. Older wholesalers, he writes, will have to learn how to promote themselves with technology that may not have existed in any form when they began their careers.


As the market gets more competitive, Barstein says, wholesalers will need to prove their worth to advisors by helping them implement and promote value-add services they can then promote to their plan sponsor clients. Barstein says the best value-adds:



  • resonate with the plan provider’s brand;

  • are easily implemented, and can save advisors time and money; and

  • are proprietary offerings from the provider.


Barstein highlights Allianz and Columbia as two providers who are leading the way in value-adds by leveraging the name recognition and institutional knowledge of their stars (Shlomo Benartzi and John Carl, respectively) to attract and retain advisors. Barstein quotes Anne Doggett, a consultant with Interactive Communications, who says that wholesalers who can effectively seek out and promote their value-adds to specific, receptive segments of the industry will be more successful than those who seek out business without any kind of focus.


“Value-add will be customized not just by advisor segment but by individual advisor, and delivered in training sessions by wholesalers who engage rather than sell or present,” Barstein predicts. 


To read Barstein’s predictions for the future of wholesaling — and to view the list of NAPA’s top 100 DC wholesalers for 2015 — click here and then on “The Future of DC Wholesaling” under the “Inside the Retirement Industry” topic heading. To download a pdf of the entire 76-page spring issue of NAPA Net the Magazine, click here.  


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