Business Transformation | 04.15.26

The Client of Tomorrow: How Will You Keep Up With Evolving Client Expectations and Regulation?

by: BISA Staff

The way clients interact with financial services is changing faster than the industry’s internal systems. That was the starting point of “The Client of Tomorrow” session at the 2026 BISA Annual Conference. Moderated by Keith Burger, EVP and head of the institutional channel at Financial Independence Group (FIG), the panel brought together Katherine Dease, chief technology and innovation officer at the Insured Retirement Institute; Joe Maringer, SVP and national sales manager at MassMutual Ascend; and Andrew Barnett, VP of technology innovation at FIG.

The discussion centered on how client and financial professional expectations are now shaped by experiences outside the industry, and how important it has become for insurance and annuities to keep pace. The issue, as the panel described it, is not a lack of demand for annuities, which consumers want for growth with protection and secure income benefits. However, the difficult processes financial professionals face in purchasing, managing, and explaining these products can deter their use.

Where Client Expectations Are Coming From

Panelists shared examples that illustrated how quickly expectations around responsiveness and interaction are shifting. Everyone is becoming accustomed to systems that respond immediately, track status automatically and provide feedback without repeated follow‑up. People expect to be able to order an item and have it delivered to their doorstep tomorrow morning. When financial processes require waiting days or weeks for updates, clients notice the difference right away.

Dease emphasized that this “expectation inflation” is not limited to a specific age group. Clients of all generations are exposed to the fast and seamless systems and bring those expectations into financial decisions.

Community and Personal Alignment

Although people of all ages have increasing expectations for speed and service, there are still generational differences. Barnett spoke about how younger clients approach financial decisions through the lens of identity and community. Many organize their lives around shared values, online groups and social platforms. Those preferences increasingly influence how they want financial relationships to work.

In brokerage and advisory accounts, there are already ways to reflect these priorities, such as value-driven portfolios. In insurance and annuities, the structure is less flexible. Products, systems and reporting often do not typically support the same level of alignment or visibility.

That gap will matter more as this generation accumulates wealth. Maringer put some numbers to the stakes. Research suggests that, often, a new advisor comes in to manage the inherited assets. Given that somewhere between $40 and $70 trillion is moving across generations over the next few decades, that is not a rounding error. Advisors who have spent years building a client relationship without ever drawing the family into the conversation are taking a real risk. Getting the next generation in the room — or on the call — early is one of the more practical ways to stay on the right side of that number.

Systems That Were Never Built to Connect

Dease believes data infrastructure in this industry is more broken than most people realize. Carriers use different formats to send annuity data, sometimes for the same product type. Distributors receive partial information on critical annuity data. Platforms struggle to reconcile the differences in the product data and the transactions across sources as they were never designed to interact. That means this data is disconnected and siloed which leads to disjointed processes. New interfaces can make some steps easier, but they eventually run into these limitations.

The practical consequence is that insurance and financial products end up losing business to mutual funds and CDs due to friction. Every extra step in the process is a decision point where a client or financial professional runs out of patience and goes somewhere simpler. That is a solvable problem, but solving it requires the industry to do something it has historically resisted: agree on shared standards that enable a connected ecosystem. The IRI has been leading that work, through its Digital First for Annuities (DFA) initiative, which has led to API standards, that give carriers, platforms and distributors a common language for data exchange.   Status, money movement, replacement transactions — when those can happen in real time instead of through email chains and manual workarounds, the distribution picture looks different. Eight carriers are already live and 37 will be live by the end of the year. The standards are free. But getting more firms to implement all of the standards is the challenge.

Maringer described the “before” picture of a MassMutual Ascend client well — so many different logins and interfaces across platforms, it was hard for customers to navigate. Streamlining all of this into one platform that allows transactions to happen from start to finish was key.

Barnett agreed that getting insurance and annuity data to show up alongside the rest of someone’s portfolio is a floor that the industry has not consistently reached, but it must. If a client buys a product and then does not see it in their platform, it can erode advisor confidence in recommending the product, as they know the call they’ll have to take later.

Regulation and Time

Regulation was discussed as a constraint that firms must design around rather than work through at the end. Clients are largely unaware of filing requirements or internal review steps. What they see is how long something takes.

Dease stressed that firms making progress are embedding compliance directly into workflows. When logic is applied early, transactions move faster and require fewer corrections later.

Barnett added that many delays persist simply because processes have never been revisited. Steps remain in place long after their original purpose has faded. Reviewing and removing them requires organizational willingness, not new technology.

How AI Fits In

AI was discussed in practical terms. Barnett shared lessons from a recent FIG hackathon where teams worked on rethinking the annuity application process. One prototype involved an AI agent that followed up with clients for missing information and routed applications forward without requiring an advisor to manage each step manually.

Barnett put a question to the room: how many people think clients will still be manually filling out applications in two years? Nobody raised a hand. That gap between what the room believed was coming and what the industry is currently building is where the real risk lives. Maringer connected this back to the robo-advisor moment of the 2010s. Those platforms came in assuming that a clean algorithm and low fees would be enough. What they ran into was that advisors had something no platform could generate: actual client relationships, referrals, trust built over years. The platforms that survived figured out how to work alongside advisors. The same logic applies to AI now.

Tools that make advisors sharper and faster will take hold. Tools aimed at routing around the relationship will hit the same wall. Dease added that with AI, the need for consistent data and the DFA standards is increased, not decreased.

Governance and Internal Tradeoffs

The panel acknowledged that governance frameworks are still evolving. Maringer described MassMutual Ascend’s approach, including code reviews, internal oversight groups and monitoring how clients use digital tools once they are released.

Barnett spoke about the balance between teams pushing innovation and teams responsible for stability and security. Both functions are necessary. Progress depends on coordination and leadership that is willing to question long‑standing practices.

Dease returned the focus to the client’s point of view. Clients do not see internal handoffs, regulatory steps or system limitations. They see whether something was easy to complete and whether it took longer than expected.

The firms that address those issues directly will be better positioned as expectations continue to rise — regardless of how familiar or established their products may be.