Delivering advisor-ready annuity tools 4x faster with Coherent

A leading U.S. annuity carrier built its reputation on digital tools that help financial professionals explain complex retirement products — but delivering those tools had become slow, manual, and resource-heavy. Each update required recoding actuarial spreadsheets into JavaScript and working around CMS constraints.

With Coherent, the carrier now converts actuarial spreadsheets directly into API-powered tools and ships new experiences in weeks. Advisors get clearer, faster calculators. Customers get transparent, interactive explanations. And the business moves faster than the market, without replatforming or increasing regulatory risk.

4x faster launches, reducing build time from 6 months to 6 weeks

Actuarial models deployed as APIs, eliminating JavaScript rebuilds

Faster load times and performance for data-heavy calculators

Secure, governed access for financial professionals without exposing logic

The Challenge

When the logic is right but the workflow can't scale.

The carrier’s annuity products rely on detailed actuarial spreadsheets — calculating income streams, benefit flexibility, tax implications, and product selection rules. But turning those spreadsheets into digital tools required translating the logic into JavaScript, maintaining parallel versions, and managing disclosures through a CMS that wasn’t built for complex modeling.

For a small digital experience team, this created:

Long development cycles (often six months or more)
Regression testing whenever logic changed
CMS bottlenecks that slowed down content updates
Compliance friction when spreadsheets were shared directly with sales teams

Because advisors rely on these tools during pre-sales conversations, every delay affected distribution, competitiveness, and customer satisfaction.

Our Solution

Modernizing annuity tools without leaving Excel.

The team explored rebuilding logic in code and expanding CMS capabilities, but neither approach aligned with how actuarial work actually happened. The models were built and maintained in Excel, where actuaries worked fastest and retained ownership. Replatforming them would have required retraining teams and investing heavily in ongoing development support.

Coherent offered a different path. The platform converts actuarial spreadsheets directly into API-ready logic services, preserving Excel as the source of truth while enabling instant digital deployment.

With Coherent, the carrier can:

Reuse actuarial logic across multiple digital tools
Update assumptions with simple spreadsheet changes
Improve calculator performance for advisors
Launch new tools in weeks, not months
Deliver consistent disclosures and reduce compliance risk

This shift eliminated manual formula translation, strengthened governance, and created a scalable foundation for future digital experiences.

Use Case 01
Helping advisors explain complex benefits clearly and compliantly

The Roth Conversion Calculator illustrates how annuity products support tax-advantaged income strategies. Previously, building it required months of recoding formulas into JavaScript — a process that slowed innovation and increased testing overhead.

With Coherent, the digital team deployed the actuaries’ exact logic as an API. Advisors now access an interactive tool through a secure web interface, with disclosures and compliance messaging applied consistently across every scenario.

The same transformation powered an Income Flex Benefit calculator. A feature once buried in dense marketing materials now updates lifetime income projections, benefit trade-offs, and withdrawal impacts in real time. The team launched it in under six weeks — with most of the timeline spent on review, not rebuilds.

Use Case 02
Getting new product tools to market — fast

When the team needed a decision-support tool to help advisors match customers to the right FIA product, they built an MVP in Coherent — bypassing CMS configuration and long development cycles. The FIA Product Navigator moved from concept to production in roughly five weeks.

This reset expectations across the organization. Tools that once took months to design, build, and test now launch in a fraction of the time, allowing teams to explore more concepts, respond faster to product changes, and support distribution partners without waiting for scarce development resources.

Use Case 03
Turning slow, data-heavy calculators into real-time tools

The carrier’s rate-based calculators require large datasets and custom scenarios — workloads that strained the CMS and slowed down advisor conversations.

Running these datasets through Coherent significantly improved performance. Results appear within seconds, and calculators no longer overload the CMS or front-end systems.

The team also consolidated shared rate data across multiple tools, eliminating duplicate spreadsheets and manual updates, while creating a foundation for future integration into pricing, product, and distribution systems.

Our Impact

From slow rebuilds to advisor-ready tools the business can scale.

Coherent transformed how the digital experience team delivers enterprise-ready calculators. The carrier now brings new tools to market faster, supports advisors with clearer product explanations, and delivers customer experiences that strengthen competitive position.

6 months to 6 weeks

Complex calculators that once required months of JavaScript rebuilds now reach production in weeks. Most remaining time goes to marketing and compliance review — not development.

Higher advisor satisfaction and NPS

Advisors get interactive tools that load quickly, stay compliant, and behave consistently across scenarios. NPS scores consistently rank these tools as a key driver of distributor preference.

Interactive experiences replace static content

Real-time illustrations and benefit trade-offs replace static marketing pages, giving customers clearer insight into retirement decisions and building confidence in the advisor conversation.

More innovation, same team size

By eliminating code rebuilds, CMS bottlenecks, and duplicate datasets, the digital experience team freed up capacity to take on more projects, respond faster to business requests, and test new ideas without relying on specialized development resources.

“Coherent eliminates JavaScript rebuilds—we use the actuary's logic directly. Tools that took months to build now launch in weeks, with better performance than we expected.”

- Digital Experience Management, Leading U.S. Life and Annuities Carrier

What's Next

Expanding Coherent across more digital experiences.

With multiple tools now powered by Coherent, the carrier sees opportunities to:

Centralize shared datasets to reduce manual updates
Support Compliance teams exploring spreadsheet-based rule engines
Build new calculators for upcoming product launches
Prepare for deeper integrations with pricing, product, and distribution systems

As more teams adopt Coherent, the business is developing a scalable way to deliver advisor-ready tools — all without leaving Excel behind.

Give advisors an advantage
in every conversation

Launch digital tools and experiences directly from pricing models in weeks—not months—while competitors are still coding.

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