AnnuityNet, Inc. has signed a deal to get variable annuity data from Wiesenberger. The Rockville, Md.-based firm will provide PDF data sheets on its database of 14,587 sub-accounts and 560 variable annuity contracts.
Wisenberger is a subsidiary of Thomson Financial, the publisher of Mutual Fund Market News.
The Leesburg, Va.-based firm will not pay Wiesenberger for the service, said Wiesenberger spokesman Ramy Shaalan. Nonetheless, the exposure will increase the firms visibility in the annuity area. The firms have announced that they are in talks to expand their relationship.
The new capability is intended to enhance the value of AnnuityNets service by making information more readily available to its clients.
While such technology has become a given in the mutual fund world, annuities are only now catching up; the additional regulatory complexity imposed by the insurance aspect of the products has posed a barrier until recent years.
A sub-committee within the technology committee of the National Association for Variable Annuities has started examining the standardization of account data transmission via eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which Wiesenberger and AnnuityNet are using.
