Q: How did you get into your current role? 

A: I have been in this business for five years. Prior to my role here at Highland, I was in the military for 14 years. After serving, I went back to school on the GI Bill and got my degree. Then I started a landscape design company, but I wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. As I thought through my options, my dad, who is a financial advisor, introduced me to a connection at Highland Capital, and the rest is history.

 Q: What does a typical day look like for you? 

A: My day looks different now than it did my first two years. The first two years I put in a lot of time learning from Senior VPs in my role by shadowing them. I would call 80 to100 people a day to set up meetings for those VPs, and then I would sit in on the meetings. Now, I focus on my own target market: military veterans who are now financial advisors. I still make a lot of calls and set up a lot of meetings, but I now have a great referral base on which I’ve built my business. This allows me to spend time outside the office, meeting with my advisors face-to- face - something I really enjoy.

Q: Annuities are hot right now due to the interest rate environment. Beyond interest rates, why would you recommend purchasing an annuity? 

A: The annuities that I specifically work with, Fixed and Index, tend to lean more toward the conservative client who may have a short runway when it comes to their “working years.” I like to refer to this runway as the "retirement redzone," which is 5 years before and 5 years after retirement. When you are in this category, you can’t afford to take a dramatic loss because you don’t have the time or income generation to make up for those downturns, like we saw in 2022. This is why we use Fixed and Index Annuities to lower the risk in a client’s portfolio. Even though you may not see those double-digit returns, you have eliminated all downside risk, and you have the ability to still capture decent upside returns in the market - all while protecting that nest egg that you worked so hard to achieve.

Q: What trends in annuities did you see last year and what are you seeing this year?

A: Last year, we saw a lot of market volatility, which made it difficult to keep up with the products and rates changing so frequently. Oftentimes, by the time a case was designed and everything was ready to sign, interest rates would change. We really had to be mindful of the timing in 2022. The interest rate environment is a little less volatile in 2023. Interest rates are still high, but they aren’t increasing every few weeks. This helps us to position products without experiencing the timing issues we saw in 2022.

Q: If you had $100,000, what kind of annuity would you purchase?

A: Well, I am not a typical annuity purchaser due to my age, but if I were to purchase an annuity for myself right now, I would go with a buffered annuity. A buffered annuity gives you market exposure with a buffer on the downside.

Q: If you had $100,000 to spend frivolously, what would you spend it on?

A: I’m huge into watersports, so I would probably put a bunch of it towards a nice wake boarding boat.

Pete Buxton
VP, Senior Advisor Consultant, Signature Annuity at Highland Capital Brokerage