Money in Motion
The Call Your Client Is Going to Get Anyway
The information about a maturing annuity reaches your client either way. Here is a three-step method for finding, matching and moving the contracts coming due in your book.
Step 1
Find it
Every contract from 2023 or earlier, sorted by call date.
Step 2
Match it
Three questions that point to a product category.
Step 3
Move it
Transfer upon maturity, never on receipt.
A client of yours has an annuity contract coming due. At some point in the next few months, a letter is going to arrive from the carrier with a renewal rate printed on it. Maybe a postcard from someone else arrives the same week.
The information reaches your client either way.
The only question is who brings it to them.
That isn’t a warning. It’s a scheduling problem. In my experience most advisors don’t lose these cases to a better pitch or a better product. They lose them to a date nobody had on a calendar.
Here’s the method we taught across three sessions this fall, in the order it actually happens.
Step 1 of 3
Find it
Pull every annuity contract you wrote in 2023 or earlier. Put them on one list.
Then sort that list by call date — not by account value. Account value tells you which case you’d rather win. Call date tells you which one you’re about to lose.
The carrier’s renewal notice typically lands 30 to 45 days before maturity. Call your client at ninety days and you’re in front of that letter, having a conversation about options. Call at thirty and you’re arguing with a number someone else already put in their hand.
Most advisors can produce this list. Almost none of them have it sorted.
Step 2 of 3
Match it
The temptation at this point is to open with a rate. Don’t. The moment you quote a number you’re in a bidding war you didn’t start, against a carrier whose renewal you haven’t seen yet.
Open with three questions instead.
- When does this money get used?Ask it concretely. “If you had to name the year you’d start pulling from this, what year is it?” A vague answer here is the single most common reason a contract gets matched to the wrong term.
- How much loss can they live with?Not what the risk questionnaire says. What they actually did in 2022. And ask both spouses separately — the household constraint is the lower of the two numbers, every time. For more on framing this one, see our piece on how a floor changes client behavior.
- Do they need contractual income?Check the floor first. If Social Security and a pension already cover their fixed expenses, this is a growth conversation, not an income one, and treating it as an income case will cost them flexibility they didn’t need to give up.
Those three answers point at a product category. Not a product. The category is as far as the conversation gets you on your own — the specific contract, the carrier and the illustration come next, and they shouldn’t come from you working alone.
Step 3 of 3
Move it
This is where good cases die, and almost always on one detail.
The detail that costs clients money
When a maturing contract transfers, the transfer request must specify transfer upon maturity. Leave that instruction off and the surrendering carrier processes it on receipt — which means the funds leave before the maturity date and your client pays a surrender penalty they never had to pay.
The money arrives. The case issues. And you’ve cost them real dollars on paperwork that was otherwise correct.
One related point worth keeping straight: a 1035 exchange applies to non-qualified money only. Qualified money moves by trustee-to-trustee transfer. They accomplish the same thing from the client’s point of view, and confusing them in front of a client is an easy, avoidable stumble.
One case, end to end
Here’s a composite that ran through all three sessions.
Composite case, for illustration only
Dave and Linda, 63 and 61
A $240,000 multi-year guaranteed contract written five years ago, maturing November 14. The renewal the carrier posted was 3.85%.
The three questions put most of this money on a long horizon with no appetite for loss and income needed on a known date — but with something coming up in the next two years that needed to stay liquid. So it didn’t go to one place. $180,000 went to a fixed indexed contract with an income rider. $60,000 went to a short-term guaranteed position as a bridge.
The dates mattered more than the split.
- September 12Signed.
- September 19Transfer request submitted, marked transfer upon maturity.
- November 14, the maturity dateFunds released — the maturity date, not a day before it.
- November 17Contract issued.
Nothing about that is clever. It’s a calendar, run backward from one date.
Two things we built
None of this is new. Every advisor reading it knows they should be working their book this way. Almost none of them do — not because it’s hard, but because nobody has the list sorted and the dates mapped.
So we built two things, both free.
The Money in Motion case assessment takes one contract from your book and about a minute. Answer the three questions and it returns the category the case points toward, a calendar worked backward from the decision date, and the language for each conversation along the way. It also checks what you’re licensed to write, so it won’t hand you something you can’t place.
The Money in Motion Sales Kit is 27 pages: the worksheets, the matching grid, the scripts, and the paperwork checklist that keeps a case from coming back.
Then run it past the desk
We’ll take it from category to illustration
The assessment stops at a category on purpose — it will not name a product, a carrier or a rate. That’s what Declan Donahue, Cory Adamson and I are here for. Send us the case and you get the illustrations, the carrier comparison and a specific recommendation you can put in front of the client.
Go pull your list.
Talk to the desk
No preference? Book with any of the three — whoever you reach runs the case end to end. Main line: 800.322.6342.
For financial professional use only. Not for public distribution.
This article provides general product-category education for licensed financial professionals. It is not a recommendation, a suitability determination, or an illustration of any specific contract. Product suitability depends on individual client circumstances and remains the responsibility of the writing agent. Processing ranges and timing guidance are general planning figures, not commitments, and vary by carrier, product and state. Section 1035 exchange treatment applies to non-qualified money only; qualified money moves by trustee-to-trustee transfer. DMI does not provide tax or legal advice. Product guarantees are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. The case described is a composite created for illustration and does not represent any actual client.
