Baird Partners with Envestnet to Accelerate Next-Gen Wealth Experience, Unifying Investments, Planning & Insurance for Advisors and Clients

Baird is the First Broker-Dealer to Fully Standardize Annuity Workflows Firmwide Using the FIDx-Powered Envestnet Insurance Exchange

Envestnet, the leading Adaptive WealthTech company, announces its continued partnership with Baird, an employee-owned, international wealth management, asset management, investment banking/capital markets, and private equity firm. Over the past year, Envestnet has worked with Baird to completely standardize all workflows for its annuities business through the Envestnet Insurance Exchange, powered by FIDx.

Baird has undertaken a significant transformation of its wealth platform, building a modern, integrated experience for advisors and clients while leveraging Envestnet’s flexible, open architecture to power critical capabilities across its ecosystem. Through deep integration with Envestnet’s platform, Baird has unified portfolio management, financial planning, reporting, and annuity solutions into a single, cohesive experience.

As part of this multi-year collaboration, Baird became the first broker-dealer to standardize annuity workflows firmwide on the Envestnet Insurance Exchange, mandating its use for all annuity business for the firm’s nearly 1,400 financial advisors. The decision creates a single, automated standard for how annuities are purchased, serviced, and reported across Baird’s wealth platform through the Envestnet Insurance Exchange.

“Baird has built one of the most sophisticated and forward-looking advisor and client experiences in the industry,” said Andrew Stavaridis, Chief Relationship Officer of Envestnet. “Our role has been to provide the flexible technology foundation – including data, APIs, planning, investment, and annuity capabilities – that allows firms like Baird to innovate at scale and deliver truly integrated advice. We are proud to be able to assist firms like Baird with streamlining historically time-consuming workflows and strengthening the next-generation wealth experience.”

“Baird is proud to lead the industry in implementing the Envestnet Insurance Exchange, a reflection of our ongoing commitment to providing advisors with technology to support their clients,” said Ellen Galezewski, Director of Wealth Strategy and Solutions for Baird. “In today’s macro environment, we recognized the role annuities can play, and we’ve been very pleased to partner with Envestnet and FIDx to modernize and streamline Baird’s annuity platform and workflow. The results speak for themselves: We’re seeing increased interest in considering annuities as part of the holistic wealth management experience we offer.”

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Annuity transactions have historically required a high volume of manual home-office touchpoints, with each case required to be reviewed to confirm advisor insurance licensing, carrier appointments, and training status prior to submission. Like the entire industry, Baird’s advisors have had to move between disconnected carrier systems to purchase and service annuity contracts, which, along with the lack of an integrated workflow for annuities, limited its ability to scale and constrained advisors’ flexibility to address evolving client needs.

The use of the Envestnet Insurance Exchange to standardize annuity business across its roster of affiliated advisors contributed to Baird surpassing its annuity sales goal for 2025, which included fee-based annuities resulting from the integration.

“A big part of how FIDx is transforming the insurance industry is simplifying how business is done,” said Rich Romano, CEO of FIDx. “That is what the Envestnet Insurance Exchange we power does – allowing broker-dealers and financial advisors to seamlessly bring annuities into wealth management.”

The Envestnet Insurance Exchange has provided Baird and its advisors with:

• Automated Home-Office Controls: Automatic and fully integrated licensing, carrier appointment, and product validations, replacing manual review cycles and significantly reducing calls and other outreach to carriers.
• Cleaner Submissions: Automated validations and structured data capture significantly reduce Not-In-Good-Order (NIGO) applications and accelerate cycle times.
• Fee-Based Annuity Access: Baird advisors have obtained an integrated, seamless path to accessing fee-based annuity solutions for their clients, which were previously unavailable via a unified platform.
• Single Advisor Workflow: The majority of application and home office suitability forms are prefilled, providing a centralized purchase-and-service interface that eliminates the need to navigate multiple insurance carrier portals.
• Annuity Pre- and Post-Sale Transparency: The Envestnet Research Center centralizes annuity product details and carrier brochures, while the integrated analytics dashboards offer a macro level view of the annuity book of business, allowing better oversight.

Attendees at Envestnet Elevate 2026, underway at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, AZ, will see firsthand how Envestnet’s wealth management ecosystem can help RIAs, advisors, and home offices accelerate growth by equipping them with the tools and insights to “meet every moment.” Whether that moment is a performance report, trading decision, or a client milestone like buying a home, saving for college tuition, or preparing for retirement, the Envestnet platform can potentially help them improve outcomes for their clients and practices.

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