We’re making changes to reflect the expanded role CreativeOne plays in the insurance and financial services industry.
The insurance and financial services industry is evolving. As is CreativeOne.
In order for organizations like CreativeOne to be successful, we must ensure our brand reflects our identity. Not only to comply with a changing regulatory landscape, but to continue to succeed as the industry changes around us. We’ve been thriving and we want to keep it that way. That’s why we’ve updated our brand, our website and our tagline. It might seem trivial to some, but it’s not to us. It’s our future — and yours.
The change of the CreativeOne tagline — to “Diversified Financial Services” — could be viewed, by some, as semantics. To me, it’s not semantics at all. It’s a purposeful description of the organization we are and the one we’re becoming. It was an easy conversation among the partners. It’s about looking forward. What does an organization need to be successful in the 21st century?
I think about the Department of Labor fiduciary rule, and its impact ever since it was introduced. Advisors and organizations have scrambled to figure out how to comply with greater oversight and the heightened risk for advisors. Tomorrow’s successful organizations must have the capability to evolve including the right people, the right resources, and the capital. Not everyone has these things.
CreativeOne does. With the changing landscape comes opportunity. We intend to capitalize in that space. And it starts by being focused. We’re a versatile organization, and have been since 1984. We’re not simply an annuity and life insurance wholesale distributor. We have a full-service, in-house broker-dealer, Client One Securities, and a separate corporate registered investment advisor (RIA) firm. We provide our advisors with cutting-edge marketing, exclusive products, and revolutionary programs like our turnkey asset management platform, ChangePath.
From a historical perspective, independent marketing organizations have typically focused on the distribution of insurance products. However, to evolve we must focus on a holistic approach to a client’s portfolio — their retirement, protection and accumulation needs. We are able to provide the platform and resources to our advisors to help their clients’ plan for the future.
What does this mean for you as an advisor? It creates an opportunity for you to broaden your practice and take a larger view of the relationship you can have with your clients. Not only focusing on annuities and life insurance — you must focus on their entire portfolio. Ultimately, that creates an opportunity to enhance your revenue and marketing share.
Concurrently, we will continue to provide top-notch products and services. We’re not exiting the annuity and life insurance wholesaling business, rather we are transforming it. You’ll still have access to more than two dozen experts in our Strategic Marketing and Communications department including marketing programs we’ve developed at CreativeOne, everything from Facebook Seminars, Simplify Your Retirement and other industry-leading lead generation programs.
Typical IMOs simply don’t have the capability to do what we’re doing. We’ve created a company with an infrastructure that allows us the ability to be flexible, regardless of what happens with the Department of Labor’s rules — it keeps us ahead of the competition. It means we’re setting trends instead of following them. We can create opportunities for our advisors where they may not have existed before.
Regardless of individual rules, whatever happens, the wheels have been set in motion. Advisors are going to have to change how they operate while ensuring their practice is compliant. We have the systems, processes, and infrastructure already in place. So, our “Diversified Financial Services” tagline isn’t semantics. It’s a description of what we stand for.