The good folks over at TSA Consulting Group have dug deep and entered into an agreement to buy Great American Plan Administrators, or GAPA. GAPA was an arm of the commission fixed and equity indexed annuity company Great American. Great American essentially used GAPA as a loss leader to maintain payroll slots or obtain payroll slots. This allowed them to continue to sell their retail fixed and equity indexed annuity products via commission based sales agents.
There is no disclosure as to what, if any agreement was reached as to keeping those payroll slots open when the administration transfers over to TSA Consulting Group. Though it is unlikely they would sell to a company that planned to shut them out.
TSA CG has a big job ahead of them. Traditionally, GAPA offered free administration services to districts, now those districts will have to pay (though I'm pretty sure the structure will be a vendor pay model). All in all, TSA CG is vastly superior to GAPA and this should expand TSA's reach into parts of the country they don't have a presence.
Scott Dauenhauer CFP, MSPF, AIF
