This month, we present Zooming In: Intentional Structuring, Asset Alignment, & Elevated Annuity Design, featuring Shannon Blair. As Founder of Aston Penney, The Annuity Advisory Firm, Shannon brings profound specialization to the often-overlooked space of annuity architecture. In this conversation, we explore her background and approach to annuity planning. She explains how keeping life insurance and annuities in their respective lanes helps advisors avoid structural flaws and pursue better client outcomes. Shannon also details her rigorous stages of case enhancement and shares why artificial intelligence tools currently fall short when analyzing complex annuity contracts.
Specialized Focus on a Single AssetThree Points: For those who may not be familiar with you or Aston Penney, can you tell us a little about your background and how you became focused on annuity planning?
Shannon: I began my career focused primarily on life insurance. Annuities were an afterthought. I’d write them when the need presented and the analysis stopped there. What changed my focus was noticing a pattern, even inside high-end life insurance firms that did excellent, sophisticated work. That same rigor rarely reached the annuities. It was a real gap. The expertise clients were getting on the rest of their plan simply wasn’t being applied to this one asset. Aston Penney exists to close that gap. It’s annuity-only, built to give this one asset the specialist attention it really needs.
Intentional Asset PlacementThree Points: Many life insurance professionals understand annuities at a high level but may not work with them regularly. What do you wish more insurance professionals understood about the role annuities can play in a comprehensive financial plan?
Shannon: Annuities are only as good as the planning behind them. The product itself is just the vehicle. It can be exponentially more impactful when the contract is matched to a specific objective and structured with precision, rather than accepted on the surface-level recommendation an IMO or general agency hands down. In most cases an annuity is added without much thought, with very little market research, and the client often loses upside that better planning would have found. The same product can be a strong outcome or a wasted one depending entirely on the thinking that went into it.
Signals for Strategic CollaborationThree Points: What client circumstances or planning conversations should signal to an advisor that it may be time to bring an annuity specialist into the discussion?
Shannon: Always. I’m not saying this for job security. It’s reality. When I’m brought in for a second opinion on an annuity that’s already been pitched, nine out of ten times I’m surprised by how much money was left on the table. That isn’t a knock on the advisors. Most of them are good at what they do. The real reason is that even seasoned professionals underestimate what good annuity design actually takes. I know it firsthand. I wish I’d never written some of the annuities I did early in my career. At the time I believed I was doing right by those clients with what I knew. Knowing what I know now, it’s hard to accept that some of them are sitting in contracts that are marginal compared to what they could have had. So my view is simple. Unless you are one hundred percent certain on annuities, your client deserves a specialist.
Moving Beyond Headline RatesThree Points: Annuities are sometimes viewed as overly complicated or treated as interchangeable products. What separates thoughtful annuity case design from simply selecting a product with an attractive rate or headline benefit?
Shannon: The rate is the last thing I look at, not the first. Thoughtful design starts with the client’s objective, then digs deep. I like to call it “zooming in.” For example, I’ve identified five distinct stages where income can be optimized during case design, with each stage getting more granular to find more value. Most planning stops at the first stage. A few fact-pattern details get dropped into a product aggregator and not much happens after that. I go through all five stages and because of it I consistently find more income than most understand is possible.
Singularity of Purpose in Contract DesignThree Points: How do you evaluate the tradeoffs among income guarantees, accumulation potential, liquidity, death benefits, and carrier strength when designing an annuity strategy?
Shannon: This is where annuity case design often goes wrong. Annuities get sold as multi-purpose, and I wish that would change. Annuities work best when they are built like race cars. Stripped down with no extra weight (costs) to hold them back. They need to be streamlined toward one purpose only, such as income or pure accumulation. Every rider, bonus, and added feature is weight, and weight shows up as lost performance in the end. So I don’t try to make one contract maximize income, accumulation, liquidity, and death benefit at once. I build for the primary objective and let the rest go. Carrier strength is the one exception. Sometimes an A- carrier is justified. And for certain clients, giving up some income upside for the safety of a mutual company over a PE-owned carrier is worth it.
Deep Auditing Over Data SummariesThree Points: What are some of the most common mistakes you see advisors make when reviewing an existing annuity or recommending a replacement?
Shannon: Most annuity reviews I would consider summaries, not actual reviews. Morningstar Reports, IMO and GA reviews, the contract and/or statements themselves, AI commentary. These aren’t reviews. They are summaries of data points. They may tell you what the roll-up rate is and what the M&E fees are, but they won’t tell you critical details that are important whether the client keeps, liquidates or exchanges the annuity.
I just worked on a case where I found a significant structural flaw on an annuity that no one had picked up on in 20 years. Three wealth advisors and four annuity brokers had touched these annuities in that period of time. Not one of them noticed the wife would have been disinherited from her own retirement if her husband passed before her. And he was 15 years older than her! Talk about a disaster waiting to happen.
My annuity reviews start with a baseline of 100 questions to the carrier and always evolve into more as contract nuance necessitates. Some call it over-kill. I call it doing the right thing.
Distinct Lanes for Asset AlignmentThree Points: How can annuities and life insurance complement one another in areas such as retirement-income planning, legacy planning, long-term care preparation, or wealth transfer?
Shannon: They work best when they stay in their own lane. There are things life insurance does that an annuity should never be asked to do, and death benefit is the clearest one. Paying extra fees for additional death benefit inside an annuity is rarely a good idea. More often than not it drags on performance and costs the client far more than it should. Life insurance is built for that. Where the two do meet is long term care. When a client can’t qualify for a Life LTC policy, an asset-based long term care annuity is a good alternative. Outside of that, I keep each one in its lane.
Methodical Execution in Complex DesignThree Points: Can you walk us through how you approach a complex annuity case—from identifying the client’s primary objectives to evaluating the available strategies and ultimately making a recommendation?
Shannon: I absolutely can. Reach out and I’ll walk you through a case study.
The Limits of Automated ToolsThree Points: Looking ahead, what trends or changes in the annuity marketplace do you believe life insurance professionals should be paying closer attention to?
Shannon: AI. Oh how I love AI, but AI does not love annuities. I have tried and tested AI and it simply does not cut it when it comes to analyzing annuities. I’m seeing a lot of AI annuity software coming into the marketplace. Please don’t rely on these tools when advising your clients. You will be doing yourself, your practice and your clients a disservice. AI still has a long way to go in this space.
Sunrise Discipline and Quiet FocusThree Points: Away from annuity planning, what is something you enjoy doing—or something about you—that your professional colleagues might be surprised to learn?
Shannon: I wake up at 3:30 AM. Not because I love that part. But because I love my horse. He is the best part of my day and it’s a privilege to drive to the barn watching the sunrise over the McDowell Mountains to go play with my pony. He is my peace and happy place. Thank you, Three Points, for the feature!
About Shannon BlairShannon Blair traded the corporate ladder to build a dream, founding Aston Penney to bring single-asset specialization to annuity planning. After entering the top 1% of the industry within two months of being licensed, she traveled the country training thousands of agents and presenting to audiences of 10,000+ financial professionals. Today, she has become the go-to resource for complex annuity cases, finding a clear path forward when others say it cannot be done. She serves as a trusted subject matter specialist on annuities for more than 45 RIA firms across the United States with firm sizes ranging from $500M to $50B+ in AUM, collectively representing over $300 billion in client assets. Born and raised on the soccer fields of Southern California, Shannon is a proud Arizona State graduate (go Sun Devils!) who now loves desert life in Scottsdale.
