Kevin Mechtley is about to become an annuity designer at a company that is hungry to deliver annuities to its customers.
Sammons Financial named him vice president of business development and chief innovation officer for the independent annuity chain.
Sammons is a West Des Moines, Iowa-based annuity and life insurance issuer that is part of a larger family-owned conglomerate.
Sammons built a new campus for its headquarters about two years ago. Since then, it has introduced a wide range of annuities and annuity features, including a three-year non-variable indexed annuity; a non-variable indexed annuity that incorporates an environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) index; and the annuity issuer power behind RetireOne’s Constance “contingent deferred annuity,” or a lifetime income faucet that can be bolted to almost any mainstream retirement savings portfolio.
Mechtley served as Sammons’ director of government affairs.
Before Mechtley moved to Sammons, he was an attorney at firms such as Aviva USA and Athene USA.
He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and a law degree from Washburn University.
He holds an Associate, Life Management Institute, professional designation, and a Level 2 certificate from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust.
He spoke, via email, about how he sees his new role.
1. What are your top priorities for your first 90 days?
Above all, we seek to maintain a high volume of product development activity across all of our distribution channels.
I look forward to helping formalize our process and the resources needed to develop new product ideation as well as to optimize our distribution channels and opportunities.
I am excited to begin.
2. Your background is in government affairs and the legal side. What makes you suitable for this role?
I have always believed that success in politics is the ability to cut through the noise and ensure that your message reaches the target individual level.
I see success in this role much the same way – part of my job is to leverage all the great insights from our business intelligence teams, channel partners and data resources to anticipate the direction the market is taking, then ensure the product solutions we develop reach the target individual level.
What gaps exist today in retirement and income planning?
