About a week ago, one of our leads sent a quote request for a deferred income annuity. It read like an underwriter wrote it.
It asked for a formal illustration on a single-premium DIA, funded by a direct trustee-to-trustee rollover from three old 401(k)s into an IRA annuity. Joint life with a 100% survivor benefit, return of premium and a cash refund death benefit. No COLA. Income starting at 65. Quotes only from carriers rated A or better. The exact name of the return-of-premium feature and how it works before and after income starts. Written confirmation that the survivor and return-of-premium options can be combined in their state. Fees, the free-look period, and a reply within five business days, because they were comparing several carriers.
Before AI, I don’t think that email gets sent. I’m almost certain it was written with AI.
That’s where this business is right now. Your prospects are already using AI. The question is what it changes for you and what it doesn’t. After 16 years of creating annuity leads, here’s my take.
Your Prospects Are Already Using It
That DIA request wasn’t a one-off. In the same 10 days, I talked to an 81-year-old who was running everything being said through ChatGPT to check it. A 75-year-old found a platform that sells annuities to fee-only advisors at slightly higher rates, and she wanted that exact rate.
Seniors have never fully trusted the internet. But AI comes across as smarter, more detailed, and not motivated by a commission. People don’t trust annuity salespeople, by and large. So it’s natural that they’ll turn to AI for information, and to double-check what agents tell them.
What does that mean for you? Your leads will be more informed, but more informed isn’t the same as better informed. A prospect might show up with good research, a wrong answer AI gave them with total confidence, or a misunderstanding they’re sure is right. You need to handle all three without getting defensive.
Expect people to ask where your answer comes from, and be ready to show them the contract language, the carrier illustration or the disclosure that backs it up. Giving people bad information can crush you now. People can quickly check the quality of your information, the quality of your recommendation, and whether you’re misleading them. There’s never been more information available than there is today.
How I’m Using AI
I’m very open to AI, and I use it in a lot of practical ways. It checks the product database behind one of our websites against what it finds online and spots inconsistencies, which it does very well. It helps fix problems in our tech stack, which is complicated. It has helped me build a client fact finder, check our website for broken links and errors, and calculate the lifetime value of our clients.
Mostly, I use it as a second brain: to get second opinions, flesh out ideas and go deeper on them.
But it’s better at some things than others. I’m not a fan of AI writing that sounds robotic and obviously fake, and I don’t think consumers are either. When I see a page that was obviously thrown together with AI, I’m instantly turned off, and I assume the company isn’t legitimate. Your prospects will figure that out too.
Why Good Leads Will Get Harder to Create
Over the medium to long term, I think AI will make high-quality annuity leads harder and more expensive to create.
The first reason is simple. The more answers people can get for free, the less reason they have to raise their hand. If someone can get most of their questions answered without giving out their information, why would they hand over their phone number and spend 10 minutes going through a process? I think fewer people will respond to marketing messages, but the people who do respond will be higher quality, and the cost of a good lead will go up significantly. That’s really a continuation of what’s been happening for the last five years or so.
The second reason is that there’s far less of a moat than there used to be. If you charted the number of annuity advertisers online over the last five years, it would look like a space shuttle taking off. Every time I log into Facebook, I see new ones. Radio and TV used to have a moat: they were expensive and hard to do well, which kept most of the industry out. Now anything that works can be copied almost overnight, and this industry loves to copy.
Some lead companies are already using AI to flood consumers with rate tables and product data. I understand the appeal, but I don’t think it lasts. Product information is becoming a commodity. It’s everywhere already, and there will be more of it every year. That kind of marketing also tends to push consumers toward the weakest products in the industry: lower-rated carriers paying the highest rates, and index annuities with teaser rates that look too good to be true.
It also creates leads agents can’t use. Most agents sell a handful of products, usually index annuities. They aren’t appointed with most of the carriers on those rate tables, and they don’t want to sell them. I’ve even heard one founder say that people buy the product, not the advisor. If you sell leads to advisors, that’s a strange thing to believe.
The Bot Problem
AI is also making fake leads harder to spot. Bots have been a problem for years, and they’ve gotten much more sophisticated.
We’ve increased our verification and scrubbing to keep up. We use bot protection built into our web hosting. And we’ve cut back on media sources that had bigger problems. Recently, I shut off a source that was sending us a few hundred leads a month, because too many of them didn’t look human. Our team spotted the patterns, and I decided the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.
There’s a balance, though. You can make a process so hard to get through that bots can’t fake it, but real people won’t finish it either. We once tested a 75-question application that went all the way to asking for a driver’s license upload. We got some sales out of it, but the numbers weren’t good. Push consumers too far, and they’ll say, “Forget this, I’m out.” Protecting lead quality without scaring off real prospects is a constant balancing act.
Bad Products Get Harder to Sell
Here’s some good news for honest agents.
Years ago, an agent I supplied leads to complained that our online leads were “too sophisticated.” The real problem was that they had enough information to see that his product, a 17- to 20-year annuity, wasn’t a good deal for them. He was in a state that allowed it, and I would never sell that product to anyone.
Now imagine selling that product in an AI world, where every prospect can get a second opinion in seconds. Good luck.
AI is going to make uncompetitive products much harder to sell. If you sell good products and give honest advice, that works in your favor.
I also think captive agents will have an even harder time. Being a captive agent is already tough, and the future is moving toward open architecture. As people learn more about all the products that are available, fewer of them will want an agent who represents only one company. Wiser consumers want options, and agencies with a deeper product menu will do better.
AI Search Is Becoming a Referral Source
AI is starting to recommend people and firms, and those recommendations carry weight.
A friend of mine, a doctor, recently fired the advisor he’d had for more than 20 years at a big-name brokerage firm. He never felt the advisor was straight with him. He interviewed four or five advisors he found on his own, plus one firm that AI recommended. He hired the one AI recommended.
When I asked why, he said that talking to them felt like talking to me. Talking to the others felt like talking to salesmen.
“AI put the firm on his shortlist. The conversation earned his business.”
That’s the lesson. AI put the firm on his shortlist. The conversation earned his business. AI may help people find you, but it doesn’t close anyone. When they do find you, how you come across is still what decides it.
Where the Agent Still Adds Value
None of this means AI replaces the agent.
Contractually guaranteed products like MYGAs and income annuities are the easiest to automate, because you know exactly what you’ll earn. Index and variable annuities are tied to the market, and people have a lot more questions about them.
Even when someone could buy an annuity on their own, most annuities are funded with qualified money that has to be transferred from an existing institution. Those transfers can take three to six weeks, with people involved at both the carrier and the firm releasing the money. It’s still a manual process. That, combined with the fact that people want to talk to someone, is why I think agents will stay important.
Some clients also want a lot of time. Some agents talk with a prospect for five hours before anything happens. I know of an agent in California who works only with engineers, and her average client meets with her 10 times before buying. What happens in those meetings? She’s explaining tradeoffs, sorting through the conflicting information the client has picked up, and helping them reach a decision they actually understand and feel good about. That’s judgment, not paperwork.
And a lot of people still want someone to sit across the table from, someone to hold their hand on one of the biggest financial decisions of their life. You can’t walk into AI’s office.
Will carriers try to cut agents out? I don’t know. They’re not nonprofits, and they’re in it to maximize profit. Some already offer consumers a better rate when they buy direct. But the more complex and personal the sale, the harder that gets.
So can AI build trust with a 70-year-old deciding where to put $300,000? Absolutely. But it depends on how it’s used. I think people will mostly use it to research the annuity marketplace so they can understand it on their own, to check what an agent has told them, and to get a second opinion on an agent’s recommendation. Not to replace the person who helps them through it.
Where I’d Draw the Line
I wouldn’t let AI talk to consumers on its own yet, especially if you’re with a broker-dealer. It still makes too many mistakes to be your frontline communication without heavy guardrails, and even then I’d be cautious. Part of the problem is that some of what it learned came from people in the annuity industry, and not all of it is honest or accurate. So it has picked up some of the industry’s bad practices and bad information. That’s not AI’s fault, and I think it will improve over time.
I wouldn’t lean on it for anything sensitive, like TCPA rules, suitability or product recommendations. TCPA advice from AI is worth exactly what you pay for it, which is nothing. We pay a law firm for that, and you should run those questions by a licensed professional too.
“TCPA advice from AI is worth exactly what you pay for it, which is nothing.”
I wouldn’t build your business around one AI tool, either. The big AI companies will probably be around for a long time, but many of the tools built on top of them won’t be.
And don’t hand off the skills that make your business work. In 16 years, I’ve never delegated our copywriting, marketing or media buying. I could have hired people for it. I didn’t, because those skills are the reason we’re still in business. If you rely on the same tool everyone else uses to create your most important material, you’ll end up sounding like everyone else.
Where to Start
If you want to try something this month, I wouldn’t start with using AI to find new clients. I’d start with the clients you already have.
If you have 300, 500 or 1,000 clients, the bigger opportunity is managing those relationships. Start with one small project: draft a follow-up sequence for new leads, rewrite a client letter you already send, or turn your meeting notes into a checklist. Over time, connected to your client records, AI can help you keep track of what matters to each client. It could notice that someone’s 10-year anniversary with you is coming up and draft a note for you to send. Small touches like that are hard to keep up with by hand, and they’re exactly what keeps clients and brings referrals.
Use it to write your follow-up emails, sequences and reminders, too. Just give it enough direction that it sounds like you and not like a machine. And be strategic about it. Not everything needs to be done with AI.
The Fundamentals Haven’t Changed
Don’t ignore AI, and don’t bet everything on it. Both are extreme bets, and both are likely to be wrong.
Use AI as much as it helps you. It can help with your marketing and your follow-up. But it won’t diagnose the problem for you, and it won’t fix a selling problem, a work ethic problem or a conversion problem on its own.
“AI won’t fix a selling problem, a work ethic problem or a conversion problem on its own.”
The fundamentals of this business haven’t changed much in 30 years. How you get in front of people has changed. Maybe you’ll do digital events instead of local seminars, or compete across a much bigger area than the 20 miles around your office. But what it takes to do well has stayed the same, and I’d bet it stays more similar than people think.
I can’t tell you what a good agent’s day will look like five years from now. Things are changing too fast. But I think people are going to crave human connection more and more as robots and technology take over a bigger part of our lives. A lot of people already have very few close friends. As AI automates more of what we do, people will want real human bonds even more, especially for the most important things in their lives: their health, their relationships and their finances. They’ll want a relationship with the companies they do business with, but really with the people at those companies. That’s what makes the process meaningful, and it’s what earns their trust.
And historically, the top 10% to 20% of agents have done most of the business. AI may widen that gap. The agents who use it well and keep the fundamentals sharp will pull further ahead.
The future isn’t written yet. But the agents who earn trust will still be the ones who win.
More Resources
About Our Lead Program
- Common Questions About Our Annuity Leads: pricing, territories, billing, refunds and how the program works.
- How We Scrub Our Leads: what our team checks before a lead ever reaches you, and why more than half never do.
- Working Our Annuity Leads: the opening script, the overnight package and the follow-up process our best clients use.
- Testimonials From Our Clients: audio testimonials from agents and advisors who use our leads.
- Free Training Video: how top producers work high-quality annuity leads.
- About Us: who we are and how we’ve run the business since 2010.
Articles
- Why Insurance Agents Should Think Twice Before Joining an FMO Lead Program: what to ask before you switch contracts for a lead or appointment program.
- How We Work With FMOs and IMOs, and Why We’re Different: how our partnerships with FMOs and IMOs work, and why we’ve stayed independent.
- Why Agents Leave Our Lead Program, and Why So Many Come Back: why agents quit lead programs, why so many return, and what to ask before you stop.
- Why a Cheap Annuity Lead Can Cost More Than a Scrubbed One: the math on cost per sale, and how to judge any lead program.
- Why Good Annuity Leads Look Bad: the five signs that fool agents into giving up on good prospects too soon.
- Why Some Agents Make Money With Annuity Leads and Others Don’t: what our most successful clients do differently.
- The 12 Biggest Mistakes Agents Make When Buying Annuity Leads: what to avoid before you spend a dollar.
- Will Annuity Leads Work in My Area? Rural vs. Big City Markets: how your market changes lead flow, case size and close rates.
- What I’ve Learned Spending Eight Figures Advertising Annuities: 16 years of lessons from the advertising side.
- Founder Interview: The Story Behind TheAnnuityLeads.com: how the company started and why it works the way it does.
- My Clients Were My Greatest Teachers: what 3,000 financial professionals taught me about business, people and myself.
Scott Brooks, MBA, CFP®, is the founder of TheAnnuityLeads.com, which has created leads for insurance agents and financial advisors since 2010.
