Why Human Connection Still Drives Retirement Planning Success

Orlando Cruz, senior vice president of retirement plans at Ameritas, explains why the retirement plan industry remains a people-first business—and how financial professionals can grow by partnering with a mutual-based organization built for long-term outcomes.

When you’re helping clients plan for a fulfilling retirement, you quickly realize it takes more than strong products. It takes a partner who’s personally committed to your long-term success.

At Ameritas, we combine retirement planning expertise, responsive service and flexible solutions to support financial professionals, sponsors and participants at every step. For us, fulfilling life isn’t just an idea—it’s how we approach every relationship.

That personal commitment matters more than ever given the pace of change in our industry. Margins are under pressure. Technology and artificial intelligence are reshaping how services are delivered. Consolidation continues across the industry.

We’re operating in a very dynamic moment. But at Ameritas, we stay grounded in one principle that hasn’t changed: this is still a people business.

Retirement planning starts with very human connections

Honestly, I’m excited about the innovation happening in our space. Technology has the power to make retirement plans more accessible, more efficient and easier to manage. It helps us scale. It helps us operate smarter. It expands our reach and our ability to connect.

But those connections must be personal if they’re going to make a real difference. Technology alone doesn’t help a small business owner understand what’s best for their employees. It doesn’t reassure a participant who’s unsure how to invest their savings. And it doesn’t replace the guidance a financial professional can provide when real people are making decisions about their future.

Unlike many financial services, retirement planning touches nearly every stage of a person’s working life. Employers make decisions that affect their workforce for years, while employees count on those decisions to support them decades down the road.

That’s why I believe leadership in this industry isn’t just about keeping up with innovation, it’s about using innovation responsibly, in service of real people.

That’s also how we approach it at Ameritas. At the end of the day, we have a participant, a plan sponsor or a financial professional who’s looking to us for guidance, and our job is to make sure we’re providing them with the right services and solutions so they can meet the needs of their clients.

A financial professional-first approach to growth

At Ameritas, we’ve made a fundamental choice about who we serve and how we serve them. Ameritas only works with financial professionals. We are a financial professional-first organization. We view our role as not helping our financial professionals sell more but helping you grow your business. We’re not focused on rollovers when participants retire. We understand they’re your clients.

Our goal is to make sure that your employers have the right retirement plan products that they need so their employees can retire with dignity.

To do that, we give our financial professionals great products to offer your clients. We give them support. We provide education materials. We’re there with them every step of the way, not only in the initial sales process, but also afterwards, whether it’s assigning a relationship manager to work with employers on a quarterly, monthly, annual basis, or it’s a dedicated payroll specialist. Our goal is to make this business so easy for our financial professionals that your focus is on growing your business, finding more clients and partnering with us to help provide the employers and the participants with the education, the tools and the services that they need.

Learn more: The Power of Scaling Your Retirement Practice

Short-term pressure vs. long-term commitment

One of the realities of our industry right now is margin compression. That pressure has driven consolidation and, in some cases, increased the emphasis on short-term outcomes.

I think it’s important to acknowledge how ownership structure influences those decisions, because your ownership really dictates where your attention must rest. If you’re owned by a stock company, you’re beholden to shareholders. If you’re owned by private equity, you’re beholden to private equity.

That may work well for quarterly earnings calls, but retirement outcomes don’t happen in quarters. They happen over careers, lifetimes and generations. Supporting those outcomes requires long-term thinking, and a company that has the space to make the right decision, not always the most popular one in the moment.

At Ameritas, we’re owned by our policyholders. We’re not owned by shareholders, and we’re not owned by private equity. So that gives us the ability to really provide for long-term planning when we’re thinking about providing retirement solutions for our clients.

Our mutual structure is pretty unique, and what that means is that we’re not chasing short-term earnings. We’re taking the time to invest in our people, to invest in our products, to invest in technology with one goal in mind: How do we continue to fulfill life? Who owns you can dictate where your focus is. And for us, our focus is on our owners, who happen to be our policyholders. That structure sets us apart in a powerful and, frankly, uniquely human way.

The team behind the commitment

Structure alone doesn’t deliver results, of course. People do. Our leadership team combines deep industry expertise, whether it’s operations, strategies, or sales, with a passion—and I truly mean passion—for our financial professionals. We’re all dedicated to the same thing: how do we continue to fulfill lives for our employees, how do we continue to be a great partner for our financial professionals, and how do we make a meaningful difference for individuals across this country that want to retire.

People matter. So does technology.

I don’t believe the future of retirement plans is about choosing between technology and people. Because at the end of the day, this is a human business. The strongest organizations will use technology to support human expertise, not substitute for it.

Whether it’s changing regulations, product complexity, evolving financial realities for employers and employees, or escalating market pressures, the future holds both challenges and unparalleled opportunity. Organizations that stay grounded in relationships, trust and purpose will be the ones that lead through change, not just survive it.

Why choose Ameritas?

What would I say to financial professionals considering us? Simple. Financial companies in this space all offer similar core capabilities. What matters is who will grow with you, and who will help you become more effective in the retirement plan space.

At Ameritas, we’re committed to being that partner, not only during the initial sale, but over the long term.

For me, that’s what modern leadership in this industry looks like. You and me, having a conversation about how we can help you and your clients fulfill life. Learn more about offering retirement plans from Ameritas.

Orlando Cruz
Senior Vice President, Retirement Plans