DPL Financial Partners has introduced a portfolio-level tool has designed to help RIAs evaluate and manage large books of legacy annuities as they migrate to fee-based advisory models.
The Annuity Review expands on DPL’s single-contract comparison utility to let advisory firms analyze entire annuity books in bulk, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
The tool flags contracts that may be candidates for exchange into fee-based products, enables transfers of nontransferable contracts to DPL for oversight, and provides a centralized dashboard where advisors can review and approve recommendations and initiate online applications.
DPL said nearly $1 billion in annuities has been uploaded to the platform since a late‑2025 soft launch with select member firms.
Across its whole platform, DPL currently has roughly $6 billion in assets under administration. It works with more than 8,500 RIA firms directly or through integrations with major wealth platforms including Black Diamond and Orion.
“As more advisors today move to a fee-based advice model, annuities have remained an outlier,” DPL founder and CEO David Lau said, highlighting his platform's supporting role for advisors to align with clients “as fiduciaries – focused on providing advice, not selling products.”
DPL's new tool expands on that promise, targeting enterprise firms running commission-based annuity books and pursuing organic growth by converting revenue streams to fee arrangements.
Industry data show the fee-based annuity market is growing but remains a small share of the overall annuity sector. Reports show commission-free annuities are about 2% of the roughly $460 billion annuity market, though sales have risen sharply by about 80% in recent years.
“We’re seeing fee-based annuities across all the product lines now, not just the traditional variable annuity,” Keith Golembiewski, Limra’s director of annuity research, recently told Barron's. He added there is “potential to double this market over the next three years.”
It's all but confirmed that the broader annuity market has built up a four-year streak of record sales, with preliminary data showing a $461.3 billion haul in 2025.
The DPL tool arrives as advisors balance client cost concerns, product features, and the mechanics of converting commission trail income into advisory fees.
Supporters of commission-free annuities say the structure reduces conflicts of interest by allowing fiduciary advisors to recommend annuity solutions without a sales commission. Critics and regulators have pointed to lingering questions about surrender charges, fee stacking, and when an annuity behaves more like an insurance product than a security.
Advisors considering exchanges and fee-based annuity offerings should weigh operational and regulatory factors, compliance experts say. A 2023 legal note from Dickinson Wright warned that transitioning to fee-based annuities can expose unwary planning-focused advisors to insurance licensing requirements in many jurisdictions.
The firm noted that an advisor selling variable annuities may no longer require FINRA registration and an insurance producer license when they stop taking commissions, instead collecting an ongoing advisory fee. However, other insurance credentials or filings can still be triggered depending on product type and state rules – a nuance that can create enforcement risk if overlooked.
"[T]here is an insurance analogue in the case of annuity advisory services in roughly half of all U.S. jurisdictions," the firm said. "In other words, many financial planners fail to realize that the insurance producer license is not the only game in town; other insurance licensing requirements could potentially be triggered when a fee is received instead of a sales commission in connection with providing advice relative to annuities."
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