The Wealth Management Opportunity Hiding Inside Your Distribution Network

LPL Financial’s Joanna Kanakis explains how insurance organizations can unlock opportunities by equipping advisors to deliver more complete financial guidance.

Insurance organizations have long excelled at building products, distribution networks, and developing trusted relationships. The challenge today is how clients are now defining value.

Clients are now expecting a single advisor who understands their full financial picture rather than separate conversations around insurance, retirement income, and investments. That shift is prompting many organizations to rethink how to optimize their distribution and how agents and advisors are enabled to serve clients more completely.

As Head of Institutional Business Development at LPL Financial, Joanna Kanakis works closely with insurance organizations to help them expand advisor capabilities while preserving the strengths that define their businesses. LPL provides the infrastructure, technology, regulatory support, and advisor training that enables organizations to evolve their wealth management capabilities without losing their identity.

In this interview with InsuranceNewsNet Publisher Paul Feldman, Kanakis discusses how distribution is evolving, why scale and technology matter more than ever, and how insurance organizations can ease the transition to a more integrated financial advice model.

INN: Let’s start with the big picture. What’s changing for insurance organizations today?

JOANNA KANAKIS: Insurance organizations have been exceptional at recruiting, developing advisors, and building products and distribution. This has been a great strength of the industry. What’s changing is how organizations think about creating value for clients.

For years, the model was product-first. Today, organizations are asking different questions: How do we help advisors have broader conversations? Which solution should we lead with? How do we create a connected client experience rather than separate conversations around insurance, retirement, and investments?

Clients increasingly expect one trusted advisor who understands their complete financial picture. That’s creating a significant opportunity for organizations willing to expand the way they serve clients.

INN: Where does LPL fit into that evolution?

KANAKIS: Our mission is very focused. Everything we do is centered on supporting institutions and their financial advisors to help them deliver human-centric advice.

Insurance organizations are first and foremost insurance providers. They manufacture products, understand risk, and know how to build successful distribution organizations. Our role isn’t to change that practice. It’s to provide the infrastructure, technology, regulatory support, and training that helps them expand wealth management capabilities efficiently.

We always start by understanding what our partners already do well. Then we look at how we can protect, support, and enhance those strengths.

INN: Who should really be paying attention to this conversation? 

KANAKIS: This evolution toward a more integrated advice model impacts everyone from Heads of Distribution, to anyone responsible for the client experience. It goes all the way to the C-Suite, because maximizing wealth management can materially impact the bottom line. Organizations that already have wealth management businesses should particularly be paying attention, as insurance organizations with strong advisor relationships are asking, “What else do our clients want or need?”

Whether organizations already deliver comprehensive financial planning or primarily offer insurance products and annuities, they’re seeing the same client expectation: people want comprehensive financial guidance and a relationship with someone they can trust.

The good news is they don’t have to build everything from scratch. LPL brings experienced teams who understand the operational, regulatory, technology, advisor, and client-experience challenges institutions face. That expertise helps reduce the friction that keeps wealth programs from growing. 

INN: Why has technology become an important part of that conversation?

KANAKIS: The cost of building and maintaining advisor technology continues to grow. Organizations are modernizing infrastructure while navigating regulatory requirements and trying to create better advisor and client experiences.

We just unveiled LPL Latitude, a unified technology experience that helps deliver more seamless, intelligent experiences for advisors and their clients. Over the last three years, we invested nearly $2 billion in building the core pillars of Latitude, and this year we expect to introduce more than 35 major enhancements.

Our scale allows us to continuously reinvest in the advisor experience. When we build capabilities for one partner, those improvements are implemented across our entire network. As of June 2026, we support ~32,500 advisors, over 1,100 financial institutions, and approximately $2.6 trillion in advisory and brokerage assets serviced or custodied.

A great example is a strategic relationship where we knew improving annuity processing and operational efficiency would be critical to the business. So we made significant investments in our annuity infrastructure, and those enhancements reduced friction throughout the application process.

INN: AI has become one of the industry’s biggest topics. How is LPL approaching AI?

KANAKIS: We look at AI the same way we look at every technology investment. No matter the latest trend, we’re committed to bringing the right tools, efficiency, and optimization to advisors and their clients.

Today, that includes embedding AI into our platform to surface meaningful client opportunities, improve workflows, and help advisors have more informed conversations. 

Just as importantly, we’re doing it responsibly. Success isn’t simply adopting AI. It’s ensuring the data is reliable, the outputs are trustworthy, and the tools can be used in a highly regulated environment. The true opportunity is applying AI to improve the advisor and client experience.

INN: Technology is important, but you also talk a lot about people. Why?

KANAKIS: Because technology doesn’t replace great advisors.

Insurance organizations have excelled at recruiting and developing talent. We believe we can complement this excellence and help insurance organizations advance their delivery.

LPL offers advisor education, coaching, and training to help professionals become more comfortable discussing investments, financial planning, and holistic advice alongside insurance solutions.

INN: For organizations that haven’t expanded into wealth management, or haven’t embraced it, why start now?

KANAKIS: Whether an organization already offers investment solutions or is just beginning that journey, the client expectation is the same. People want an advisor who understands them holistically and can help them navigate a variety of financial needs, not just one product or one moment in time. LPL helps institutions turn wealth into a growth business by solving the real constraints that keep wealth programs from reaching their potential.

Clients increasingly expect the kind of personalized experience they receive in other parts of their lives. That’s why we believe holistic wealth management is becoming such an important opportunity for insurance organizations.
It helps advisors deliver more value, strengthens client relationships, and positions organizations to grow alongside the evolving needs of the clients they serve.

INN: Insurance organizations don’t all approach wealth management the same way. How flexible is LPL’s model?

KANAKIS: We’ve seen multiple successful models. Some organizations use a centralized team of investment specialists, while others license and equip every advisor to deliver comprehensive financial guidance.

LPL doesn’t believe there is a single right answer. The right approach depends on the organization’s culture, its strategy, and the experience it wants to create for clients.

We don’t ask organizations to fit into our model. We build around theirs. 

INN: What’s the biggest concern organizations have when considering a relationship?

KANAKIS: Change management.

Conversions are significant undertakings, and organizations naturally wonder whether it’s the right time, or worry about potential risks inherent in the transition itself.
Fortunately, we’ve seen this movie before.

We have about 400 conversion specialists whose entire focus is helping organizations navigate transitions while minimizing disruption and supporting both advisors and clients. 

We want to understand what makes your organization unique, then design an operating model around it.

INN: What does success look like several years into a relationship?

KANAKIS: Success starts with the insurance organization’s core business becoming even stronger.

We want to help organizations mature their wealth management capabilities in ways that make sense for them. When advisors become more productive, organizations build deeper client relationships, communities gain greater access to financial guidance, and clients receive more holistic advice. That’s when we know we’ve done our job.

Learn more about LPL Financial at www.lpl.com/institutions/insurance-firms.html
or CLICK HERE to directly connect with Joanna Kanakis.

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