InsurTech life insurance startup Ladder introduced Ladder for Advisors on Tuesday at the T3 Advisor Conference, the leading practice management and technology conference for independent and hybrid financial advisors.
Ladder for Advisors is a new solution intended to provide financial advisors with an efficient way to help their clients implement term life insurance as part of their ongoing financial planning.
Ladder for Advisors is designed for advisors who are frustrated with the traditional process that is “typically slow and full of friction and products that lack flexibility,” according to Ladder’s announcement. Ladder for Advisors, the company says, provides a simple process for helping them obtain coverage for clients but also enables them to make life insurance an “interactive” component of a client’s overall financial plan. Clients can easily decrease coverage at any time or apply for more, with no fees, to meet changing needs. Advisors can access this capability to engage clients and ensure the right amount of coverage is incorporated into their financial plan.
“Ladder for Advisors is aimed at helping financial advisors deepen their relationships with their clients by ensuring this important component of a holistic financial plan is addressed,” said Jeff Merkel, Ladder co-founder. “Ladder’s digital approach makes it easy to not only get life insurance in place instantly but to also be able to adjust it as needs change over time.”
With Ladder for Advisors, financial advisors will have access to a customized toolkit that makes it easy to share materials with clients and for their clients to apply for an instant decision on fully underwritten term coverage — ranging from $100,000 to $8 million, from 10 to 30 years. Policies are issued by Fidelity Security Life Insurance Company.
In addition, advisors have access to a dashboard that provides the visibility necessary to help ensure clients have the right amount of coverage for their needs, at any given time. With this digital insight at their fingertips, Ladder says advisors have a more comprehensive view of how life insurance is interacting with other pieces of a client’s overall financial plan.
“Life insurance has long been a fundamental pillar of family protection, and a key aspect of the comprehensive financial plan. But until now, financial advisors actually focused on advice and not product sales have had few ways to help their clients implement the life insurance they need,” said Michael Kitces, partner and director of wealth management at Pinnacle Advisory Group and co-founder of the XY Planning Network. “I’m excited by the rise of solutions like Ladder for Advisors, that gives independent fee-only advisors a way to help their clients implement the life insurance they need, with flexibility and transparency, and the digital experience our next-generation clients want and expect.”
For more information visit www.ladderlife.com/advisors.
About Ladder: Founded in 2015, Ladder has designed a digital-first life insurance platform to serve today’s financially savvy consumer. Ladder has raised a total of $54M in funding from investors, including RRE Ventures, Canaan Partners, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. For more information visit www.ladderlife.com/about.
