Lockton Cos. Inc. continues investing heavily to create a one-stop-shop that can fill all the insurance and consulting needs of independent registered investment advisers, and it now has a new brand for the endeavor: Synchronize.
“The idea is to be a business partner for financial advisers, to be able to help them protect, manage and grow their business,” said Matt Meyer, director of life insurance planning and distribution for Lockton Cos.’ affiliate Lockton Affinity. “We’ve got teams with expertise to work on their professional liability and their cyber protection and consult on their reporting systems and their customer management systems because we know the business really well. We can incorporate the planning that we do on the insurance side for their clients and bring in Lockton expertise when we need specific help. We’ve done a lot of research, and we haven’t found any other business that is consolidating in such a fashion to provide this kind of one business partner solution.”
Lockton Affinity started focusing on building a dedicated RIA business in January 2021, when it acquired San Diego-based The Blueprint Insurance Services. The company developed an insurance platform focused on providing technology, training and customer services to help RIAs and financial advisers engage in comprehensive risk management conversations with clients. Lockton Affinity added a full suite of business insurance products to also serve the RIA companies themselves.
In April 2022, Lockton acquired Minneapolis-based SBG Inc., which gave the enterprise the technology to scale up and go after the industry’s largest RIAs.
Now, Lockton Affinity is packaging up all of its RIA offerings under the Synchronize brand. It comes at a time when RIAs face pressure to add more services. But clients don’t want to have to go to multiple different companies to get life, property and casualty, and home and auto insurance. Synchronize intends to save time and find the best fit for clients’ needs.
“We’ve been working on this for the last 18 months, and we’re finally to the point that we feel comfortable going to market with it,” Meyer said. “These advisers want to grow, they want to increase their assets, and they want more clients. To do that, they’re kind of migrating toward having a family office-type of experience, and they really don’t know what that means other than to add more stuff. Synchronize can help guide that effort and solve a lot of problems. That’s really what we’re going for. We can speak to their clients in their language, not in our insurance language. We simplify it and provide a comprehensive client experience that helps RIAs generate more revenue in different channels, which makes their business more valuable.”
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