Allianz Life Gets Direct Access to eMoney Advisor Platform With New Pact

Allianz Life teamed up with eMoney Advisor as part of a deal that provides the annuities and life insurance firm with direct access to the financial planning software maker’s platform.

Allianz Life is also able to leverage the platform’s digital capabilities and collaboration features to “demonstrate the value of annuities through a planning lens,” eMoney Advisor said Tuesday.

Financial terms of the pact were not disclosed. However, Dale Fuller, senior director of advisory and strategic accounts for Allianz Life, told ThinkAdvisor on Wednesday that it’s a “two-year partnership with the opportunity to extend it longer.”

The deal came in response to “advisor demand for more comprehensive retirement analysis support and better annuity reporting,” he said. The partnership with eMoney “is twofold: first it provides clients and advisers more support and resources to objectively evaluate retirement solutions within eMoney’s comprehensive financial planning software and secondly it helps provide a holistic picture by including policy data feeds between Allianz Life and eMoney,” he noted, explaining: “We will now be able to integrate real-time annuity data directly into the advisor’s plan to help them better manage their client’s overall portfolio. The overall partnership with eMoney also gives us the opportunity to demonstrate to eMoney advisors the value of annuities in general and the principal of building protection into a financial plan.”

This was the first partnership between the two companies, he said, adding the deal was finalized in the first quarter “after several discussions between our leadership teams over the past year.”

“The interest was mutual and welcomed by leadership at both firms,” according to Leslie Knotts, head of relationship management at eMoney. “We share the same value set: improving client outcomes through holistic planning and suitable investments,” she told ThinkAdvisor.

“We view it as a net positive for both advisors and their clients — it reinforces how advisors can use eMoney’s financial planning technology to evaluate their clients’ investment decisions,” she added.

With the deal, Allianz Life gains access to eMoney Premier, eMoney’s most robust planning package that includes Foundational Planning and Advanced Planning, providing a fully integrated experience that enables planning for all clients regardless of financial situation, on a single platform, eMoney Advisor said. The eMoney Client Portal and Advanced Analytics tools are also available within eMoney Premier, it said.

— Check out Schwab Signs Data Deals With Envestnet, eMoney, Intuit on ThinkAdvisor.