Orion Expands Access to DPL's Commission-Free Annuity Marketplace

As Lau stressed, Orion’s advisors will gain access to a comprehensive lineup of commission-free annuities and “best-in-class” life, disability and long-term care products. Orion advisors will additionally have direct, integrated access to DPL’s proprietary tools for discovering and comparing annuities by type, benefits and costs. Finally, data feeds from DPL into the Orion Advisor Technology platform enable management of annuity assets alongside other investments in the client’s portfolio.

A Big Milestone for DPL

Reflecting on the progress his firm has made over the past five years since its founding, Lau said he was gratified to see the platform cross $1 billion in total annuity sales last year, while the combined assets under management of advisors on the platform has crossed $1 trillion. He said he always expected to hit these levels, but not necessarily this quickly.

“Those were both really cool milestones to be able to pass in 2023,” Lau said. “As it related to working with Orion, the main reasons advisors have shied away from using annuities on a fee basis in the past have been structural. The right product formats didn’t exist and the tech didn’t exist — or the tech didn’t work on their systems or desktops. We’ve been focused on breaking all that down, and to partner with the likes of Orion is critical to achieving the overall vision.”

Lau said the firm aims to continue to innovate and pursue new integrations in 2024, especially when it comes to improving advisors’ ability to support annuity purchases at scale.

“Annuities have traditionally been sold on an individual, one-off basis,” Lau explained. “Purchases have been taken place between one client and one broker. Well, we have these mega-RIAs out there today that manage many billions of dollars, and they don’t want to open up 10,000 individual annuities. Just like if you’re selling a solution on the asset management side, you don’t want it to be an individual client portfolio thing. We know our solutions have to be scalable.”

Pictured: David Lau