October 2023 - Sales Bulletin

SALES BULLETIN

Marketing News for Centaurus Representatives

October 2023: Featured Exhibitor | Sammons Sammons Institutional Group (SIG) is a member of Sammons Financial Group. SIG provides retirement solutions through Sammons Retirement Solutions® (SRS) and Midland Retirement Distributors® (MRD). Each division specializes in developing and distributing individual retirement solutions through broker/dealers and banks. SRS distributes simple, innovative and straightforward mutual funds, IRAs and annuities that can help individual investors live well in retirement.

CLICK HERE for more information about Sammons.

Sales Bulletin

For Broker/Dealer Use Only • Not for Use With the Public

Centaurus Financial, Inc.

NEWS FROM: INSURANCE AND ANNUITIES Product Leaders Variable Annuities

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Jackson Perspective II Equitable Cornerstone Nationwide Destination Allianz Index Advantage Lincoln Level Advantage

Nationwide: Time to consider money market funds?

It’s no secret that there are alternatives to stocks with money market yields over 5%, tempting investors that have endured over a decade of zero-bound interest rates. Arguably, holding cash, or “dry powder,” might look compelling as an alternative to the S&P 500® Index.

Fixed & Indexed Annuities

Athene: 10 Cybersecurity tips to help protect your business and clients Having an online presence is a must to run and grow a business. With that necessity and convenience also comes the responsibility to protect your business and clients’ information. Not taking the proper online security steps could expose your business and clients to professional criminals trying to steal credentials or other personal information or infect your computer network with malware for their financial gain.

Mutual Funds

Lincoln: Give Clients Three Reason to Put Cash to Work With Confidence Investors have poured more money into cash than any other time in history, even while the markets have rebounded. Cash may feel safe, but research shows the real long-term risk with stocks is not owning them. Cash can play a crucial role in every portfolio — especially when it comes to funding for short-term goals and liquidity needs.

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Allianz Benefit Control Nationwide New Heights Athene Ascent Pro Sammons LiveWell North American Secure Horizon Plus

Vanguard Money Market AMF Growth Fund Franklin Income Sammons Livewell Mutual Fund AMF American Balanced

Variable Life

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Ameritas VL Lincoln Life VUL Prudential VUL Equitable COIL Pacific Life Exec II

Fixed & Indexed Life

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Pacific Life Indexed Accumulator Allianz Life Pro Plus Pacific Discovery Xelerator IUL JHKV Accumulation IUL MN Strategic Accelerator

Sales Bulletin

Pacific Life: Market Review and Outlook – Q2 2023 Equity markets continued to rise during the second quarter of 2023, with the S&P 500® index up 8.30% for the period. As in the first quarter, growth stocks fared better than value stocks, while large-caps outperformed small-caps during the second quarter. International equities lagged domestic stocks, as only a handful of mega tech stocks drove the U.S. market higher. The tech giants benefited from the exuberance over artificial intelligence (AI) since the launch of ChatGPT. Allianz: Turn Up The Volume Looking to crank up your sales volume? Take a look at the Allianz 222® Annuity. In addition to innovative features like Index Lock, it’s now offering a 40% bonus on all premiums submitted in the first 18 months. And that’s just one of Allianz’s many positive product changes. Check out the full suite of fixed index annuities (FIAs) to see how it’s giving your clients more value – and helping you amplify your sales opportunities.

Equitable: Do Your Clients Need a Pre-Nup for Their Business?

Many are familiar with pre-nuptial agreements between soon-to-be husbands and wives. But, what about people going into business together? For closely held or family businesses, a properly designed and funded buy-sell agreement can save time, hassle and money, similar to a pre-nup for couples. In the end, it could actually save the business, too.

For Broker/Dealer Use Only • Not for Use With the Public

Centaurus Financial, Inc.

NEWS FROM: INVESTMENT MANAGERS American Funds: 50 years of flexible growth investing – and counting When The Growth Fund of America® launched, Richard Nixon was in the White House, the economy was mired in a deep recession and IBM, with a market capitalization of $36 billion, was the largest U.S. company. It was December 1973, and Don O’Neal, now a co-president and portfolio manager for the fund, was in the eighth grade. Much has changed over the decades. Today the largest U.S. company, Apple, is worth $2.8 trillion, and millions of consumers carry smartphones exponentially more powerful than the computers available in 1973.

Yet through waves of innovation, shifting consumer demands and various market cycles, The Growth Fund of America (GFA) has consistently maintained a flexible approach to growth investing.

Invesco: Six key themes impacting markets today After continued uncertainty, confusion, and chaos, author Kristina Hooper thought it would be helpful to step back and think about the key themes affecting economies and markets today. In this piece, she discusses six of these themes. Theme No. 1: Markets are becoming somewhat desensitized to geopolitical risk. Global stocks didn’t experience the big sell-off many feared would occur earlier this month, despite the rise in geopolitical risk since Hamas’ attack of Israel. Just as markets have become desensitized to U.S. government shutdowns, they have become somewhat desensitized to geopolitical conflicts.

Franklin Templeton: The case to stay invested in the lowest rated segment of emerging market debt Spreads on the lowest rated (C rated and below) segment of Emerging Market (“EM”) Debt have widened significantly in recent years, and now constitute over 40% of the total EMBI Global Diversified Spread, despite being only 5.3% of this index. In this paper, Franklin Templeton discusses some of the drivers of this valuation dislocation and argue that low correlations, alpha opportunities and the potential for impactful ESG engagement are all reasons to stay invested in this segment of the asset class.

Alliance Bernstein: Latest Events The most noteworthy event of the last few weeks has been the conflict in the Middle East. Conflict is one of the most challenging uncertainties for market participants to navigate. That said, the last few weeks have turned up the dial on geopolitical risks, with potential for escalation if other regional players get involved. As expected, the knee-jerk reaction was for oil prices to rise and treasury yields to fall as money flowed into safe haven assets. While geopolitical concerns often inject volatility into markets, they generally do not shift the long-term investment thesis.

NEWS FROM: ADVISORY Product Leaders Advisory

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Centaurus CLASSIC Plus SEI Orion The Pacific Financial Group Strategic Equity Management

Sales Bulletin

CLASSIC Plus FlexUMA CLASSIC Plus FlexUMA is a Unified Managed Account (UMA) solution that provides a powerful and integrated investment platform for IARs to grow their business and provide robust advisory solutions to clients. FlexUMA features ETF Select and UMA/Multi-Manager portfolio models that can be utilized individually or blended together for custom allocations. FlexUMA is available on the Charles Schwab & Co. platform.

ETF Select ETF Select is a low-cost turnkey solution for smaller and price-sensitive clients that provides a selection of managed, risk-based portfolios from leading ETF strategists BlackRock, Morningstar and Vanguard.

For Broker/Dealer Use Only • Not for Use With the Public

Centaurus Financial, Inc.

UMA/Multi-Manager UMA/Multi-Manager provides a selection of single- and multi-manager models from industry-leading and boutique managers under one platform. It also provides access to a vast array of models such as stop-loss strategies, sector rotation, tax-free income, inflation protection, global markets, institutional investing, hard assets, alternatives and many more.

CLASSIC Plus Morningstar Managed Portfolios Morningstar® Managed PortfoliosSM provide IARs with the ability to open actively managed ETF and Select Equity Portfolios within a Pershing advisory account on the CLASSIC Plus platform. The Morningstar ETF Portfolios consist of core models from conservative to aggressive growth that are actively managed to create diversified, low-cost and tax-efficient portfolios for your clients. The Select Equity Portfolios provide a series of model and customizable portfolios spanning the stock market that combine the professional management of Morningstar with the advantages of having a separately managed account.

SEI: Technology Updates can Boost Productivity In today’s digital world, customers expect every interaction to be personalized. Wealth managers need modern technology to drive growth and meet customer needs. Wealth management firms that transform their technology reap businesswide benefits. Research indicates that these benefits include, on average, a nearly: 14% increase in productivity, 8.1% increase in assets under management, 7.7% increase in revenue. But updating old technology can be daunting. Where do you start? How do you align your business and technology strategies? How do you upgrade your technology in a way that can help increase current productivity and supports future growth?

ACM: Just Another Feature of the Investing Environment Economists regularly plead for politicians to seek efficiency in the pursuit of any fiscal goals, even though those pleas invariably fall on deaf ears. National security is one of those goals that has come into greater focus for the last two administrations as a growing Chinese military threat has come to the fore. This month, we were reminded of the potential cost of policy intrusions into private markets when the U.S. placed additional limits on the export to China of advanced technology, notably computing chips and the equipment needed to make them. Companies have always had to navigate around the obstacles created by industrial policy.

SEM: Not So Rosy We started 2020 with excessive optimism (even though SEM’s economic model was concerned about a slowdown). That optimism quickly spread to excessive pessimism for about 8 weeks, which chopped 35% off the market valuations. As the government (over) reacted to the pandemic with (unprecedented) stimulus, stocks bottomed, and we reverted to excessive optimism during the second half of 2020 and all of 2021. It seemed nothing could stop the market’s march higher. In 2022, the Fed started the year by telling us it would need to raise interest rates to fight inflation (which had started roaring higher in April 2021). Everyone then became overly pessimistic and chopped 22% off the market valuations (and 18% from the bond market index).

Corporate earnings dipped some, but in the last quarter of 2022 a new narrative began to form.

Orion: There Is Another Alternative This quarter has been tough on stocks and bonds so far, and the week of October 16 was no exception. Tough talk from the U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman and even tougher headlines from the Middle East have not been supportive of investor optimism or market gains. As for the former, Fed Chair Jerome Powell stressed that week that the economy remains strong, and inflation is too high. In turn, longer-term interest rates moved sharply higher, with 10-year Treasuries coming within a blip of a 5% interest rate and hit their highest levels in over 16 years.

Sales Bulletin

For Broker/Dealer Use Only • Not for Use With the Public

Centaurus Financial, Inc.

Dunham: Defend and Conquer As a financial advisor or investor, you deal with all kinds of taxes. Things like capital gains taxes and the income taxes and on and on. But have you ever heard of the “volatility tax”? Don’t worry if you haven’t since it’s hardly ever mentioned. But this tax, the author of this Dunham blog believes, is the most insidious of them all for investment returns. The volatility tax is the hidden tax that occurs from steep portfolio losses that crush long-term compounded returns. It’s essentially a deceptive cost that will plague investors through negative compounding returns. Throughout history, markets seem to have followed a pattern of boom-and-bust cycles – particularly with relatively slower rises over the years, only to implode quickly.

TPFG: The Significance of October as Financial Planning Month As financial advisors, your role extends beyond number crunching and investment strategies. It involves guiding your clients toward financial well-being and empowering them to make informed decisions. October brings with it not only the fall season but also an excellent opportunity to emphasize the importance of financial planning. This month serves as a reminder to review, reflect on and refine client financial goals and strategies. Here’s why communicating October as Financial Planning Month (and any month) is crucial for strengthening your client relationships and promoting financial success.

Sierra Mutual Funds: The Market is Rewarding Credit Exposure, Not Duration The market is currently rewarding credit exposure – not duration exposure. Tactical Core Income Fund reflects that in the underlying positions of the Fund. The Fund is gaining exposure to noninvestment-grade credit risk through funds that predominately invest in high yield corporate bonds and floating rate notes. The Sierra Tactical Core Income Fund invests in underlying fund investments in lower-quality bonds, known as high yield or junk bonds, that present greater risk than bonds of higher quality. Municipal securities are subject to the risk that legislative changes and economic developments may adversely affect the value of the Fund’s investments.

NEWS FROM: TECHNOLOGY Product Leaders Technology • • • • •

Redtail RightCapital Albridge SmartOffice Pontera

Redtail: How Can You Make Your Business Run More Efficiently and Effectively The systematization of your processes available through Redtail serves two equally important functions: it helps you stay compliant while also helping you to serve your clients better. Because you can segment your client base in so many ways with Redtail, you are better able to define levels of service for different types of clients. Using those defined levels of service, you can then assign various types of processes to your different client types.

DocuSign: The Economist Infographic The anywhere economy is the flexibility brought by electronic devices, internet connectivity and digital platforms that allow communication, collaboration and transactions to take place in real-time and independent of space.

Broadridge: How to Prepare for the SEC’s Market Structure Proposals Last winter, the SEC issued four proposals containing substantial reforms for the US equity markets, kicking off a flurry of discussion and debate. While the public comment period ended on March 31, discourse around the precise meaning of the proposals, the pros and cons of implementing them and the potential ramifications for our market structure has raged on.

Sales Bulletin

For Broker/Dealer Use Only • Not for Use With the Public

Centaurus Financial, Inc.

CENTAURUS WORKSHOPS & CONFERENCES

LEADERS CONFERENCE Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort & Spa Kauai, Hawaii January 7-12, 2024 (13 for Club 16)

NATIONAL SALES CONFERENCE The Langham Huntington Pasadena, California June 17-21, 2024

EDUCATIONAL WEBINARS *Live Webinar Series* Equitable: Asset Location Planning Third Week: Thursday, November 2nd, 2023 Fourth Week: Thursday, November 9th, 2023 Fifth Week: Thursday, November 16th, 2023 Sixth Week: Thursday, November 30th, 2023 Register for this series to learn: • How to position the ALP concept for your clients and business • How to help your clients save taxes as they accumulate, distribute and transfer their wealth *Live Webinar* Redtail: Practice Management Date: Tuesday, November 7 Register to learn: • How Redtail can change your business • How other reps utilize Redtail to grow their practices *Live Webinar* TruChoice: Top 10 Tax Traps Date: Thursday, November 9 Register to learn: • A number of scenarios that could trigger higher than expected taxation for clients • How to help clients avoid these potential risks *Live Webinar* Frontier Asset Management: The Tax-Savvy Advisor Date: Tuesday, November 14 Register to learn: • How to support clients with tax-managed strategies • How do more with a different approach

Sales Bulletin

For Broker/Dealer Use Only • Not for Use With the Public

Centaurus Financial, Inc.

*On Demand* Allianz: In the K.N.O.W Watch this recording to learn: • To identify the opportunities for your life insurance business when working with women to grow your client base • Learn about key findings regarding women and finances so you are better prepared *On Demand* Equitable: Making a Quantum Leap using ALP Watch this recording to learn: • How you can add an additional source of income to your practice • How to position the concept in order to generate more assets under management

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT *Product Highlight* Transamerica - Structured Index Advantage Annuity The Transamerica Structured Index Advantage® Annuity is a registered index-linked annuity (RILA) that offers growth potential and a level of investment protection at a low cost. It’s designed to help make financial futures more predictable. See how it works, growth and protection. A powerful combination in action. See how capturing positive returns while enjoying a level of protection can be a powerful addition to an effective investment strategy. Click here for more details. *Product Highlight* North American – PrimePath Pro 10 The PrimePath Pro 10 annuity is a flexible, premium, fixed indexed annuity that offers growth potential for retirement assets while providing protection from market downturns, as well as flexible options for taking lifetime income. Click here for more details. *Product Highlight* Allianz – Benefit Control Want greater access, more control and the possibility of income increases? Allianz Benefit Control® gives you immediate access, two ways to get a bonus and more control over how you pursue your retirement goals. Plus, clients’ income payments could go up, based on the performance of their chosen index(es).

Click here for more details. *Product Highlight* Nationwide – New Heights Longer life expectancies. Shifting responsibilities. Common concerns. Nationwide New Heights Select 9 can help clients with all of these. It’s a single-purchase-payment, deferred fixed indexed annuity designed to provide growth potential for clients’ retirement savings while also helping to protect against market losses.

Click here for more details. *Product Highlight* Athene – BCA You can overcome the challenges of traditional retirement savings solutions. You can shield the money clients have worked so hard for without settling for historically low interest rates. Clients can benefit from the upside potential of the markets without worrying about stock market downturns. Select one of Athene’s options to explore the BCA® 2.0 and Athene® Velocity opportunities. Click here for more details.

Centaurus Financial, Inc. | 2300 E. Katella Ave., Suite 200 |Anaheim, CA 92806 Toll-Free: (800) 880-4234 | Fax: (714) 456-1797 | www.centaurusfinancial.com

FOR BROKER/DEALER USE ONLY • NOT FOR USE WITH THE PUBLIC Sales Bulletin

For Broker/Dealer Use Only • Not for Use With the Public

Centaurus Financial, Inc.