MassMutual Ascend
Provides transparent annuities for retirement planning
Master Data Management & Operations Director - BP&AD Reporting & Information Solutions
+ Bonus + Variable Incentive Compensation
More locations: Springfield, MA, USA
Hybrid office work is required.
About the job
- 8+ years of experience in Master Data Management, Data Stewardship, Data Quality, Data Governance, Information Management, or related data management disciplines.
- 3+ years of people leadership experience, including leading, coaching, developing, and managing teams.
- 3+ years of experience building, scaling, or operating data stewardship, Master Data Management, data quality, or data governance capabilities in a complex organization.
- Build, lead, and develop a high-performing Master Data Management, data stewardship, and data operations team.
- Establish team priorities, operating routines, service expectations, and measures of success aligned to Distribution business objectives.
- Develop team capabilities across data stewardship, issue management, data quality, business requirements, governance operations, and stakeholder engagement.
- Define and execute the Distribution Master Data Management strategy, roadmap, operating model, and adoption plan.
- Establish practical data ownership, stewardship roles, decision rights, standards, and accountability across core master data domains.
- Create repeatable processes for managing data definitions, source-of-truth expectations, hierarchy structures, reference data, domain inventories, and critical data elements.
- Partner with business leaders to resolve ownership conflicts, clarify data standards, and align Master Data Management priorities to business outcomes.
- Lead day-to-day stewardship activities across assigned master data domains, including Product, Party, Advisor, Account, Contract, and reference data.
- Oversee data issue intake, triage, root cause analysis, exception management, remediation planning, and business escalation.
- Maintain stewardship procedures, business glossaries, data standards, domain documentation, ownership records, and operational playbooks.
- Coordinate recurring stewardship reviews, domain health reporting, issue management routines, and operational performance tracking.
- Partner with Technology, Architecture, Engineering, and implementation partners to define business requirements, data models, matching rules, survivorship logic, hierarchies, workflows, and operating controls.
- Support Master Data Management platform implementation, testing, adoption, operational readiness, and ongoing enhancement.
- Ensure Distribution data standards, stewardship workflows, and business rules are reflected in systems, integrations, reporting platforms, and downstream data products.
- Represent business needs in technology delivery while ensuring solutions are operationally sustainable.
- Establish data quality measures, scorecards, controls, thresholds, and monitoring routines for critical master data elements.
- Drive improvements in data accuracy, consistency, completeness, timeliness, usability, and trust.
- Identify recurring data defects, manual reconciliation needs, and operational pain points, then lead cross-functional remediation efforts.
- Promote continuous improvement by strengthening controls, reducing repeat issues, and improving upstream data capture and maintenance practices.
- Lead stakeholder engagement, communications, and training activities that support adoption of Master Data Management, stewardship, and data quality practices.
- Help business users understand their role in maintaining trusted master data and using governed data assets.
- Communicate progress, risks, adoption metrics, data quality outcomes, and operational health to senior business and technology stakeholders.
- Promote a mindset that treats master data as a shared business asset requiring active ownership and stewardship.
- Experience standing up a new Master Data Management, stewardship, data operations, or governance function.
- Experience managing Product, Advisor, Party, Account, Contract, Customer, or reference data domains.
- Experience managing day-to-day data quality issues, data issue triage, root cause analysis, remediation planning, and stakeholder escalation.
- Experience establishing business data standards, ownership models, stewardship routines, operating procedures, and data quality measures.
- Experience partnering with technology teams to define business requirements, workflows, controls, data models, and platform capabilities.
- Experience implementing, supporting, or enhancing a Master Data Management or data governance platform.
- Experience partnering with technology teams to define business requirements, controls, workflows, and data management solutions.
- Experience creating domain health reporting, data quality scorecards, business glossaries, critical data element inventories, or stewardship playbooks.
- Experience leading operational data issue management, data remediation routines, or business data support processes.
- Financial services, insurance, wealth management, asset management, or distribution experience.
About the company
MassMutual Ascend provides annuities and related life insurance products through its MassMutual Ascend Life Insurance Company. Its annuities—made to be transparent and easier to understand—help people plan their financial future with clear expectations. The company issues products directly and offers registered index-linked annuities distributed by MM Ascend Life Investor Services, LLC, an affiliate. What sets MassMutual Ascend apart is its emphasis on clarity, client-focused service, and ongoing improvement beyond the status quo, backed by MassMutual’s claims-paying ability. Its goal is to help customers navigate their financial future with confidence by offering straightforward, reliable retirement and protection solutions through a network of affiliated issuers and distributors.
Company Size
201-500
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
N/A
Headquarters
Cincinnati, Ohio
Founded
1976
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- August 2026 lifetime advisory annuity sales passed $2 billion, with $900 million since 2025.
- January 2026 Income Ascender rider broadened fixed-indexed annuity shelf appeal.
- LIMRA projected 2026 annuity sales above $450 billion, supporting continued demand for income products.
What critics are saying
- Fee-only RIAs still resist annuities; complexity slows adoption and prolongs sales cycles.
- LIMRA says H1 2026 fixed indexed annuity sales fell 5% year over year.
- Nationwide, Jackson, and Athene can outspend Ascend, compressing pricing and distribution margins.
What makes MassMutual Ascend unique
- 2016 launch of the first advisory fixed-indexed annuity gave MassMutual Ascend a channel head start.
- 1,700 advisors across nearly 1,000 RIAs create a sticky distribution moat.
- LIMRA ranked MassMutual Ascend top in advisory FIA sales for eight straight quarters.
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Benefits
Flexible Work Hours
Hybrid Work Options
Remote Work Options
Company News
MassMutual Ascend tops $2 billion in RIA annuity sales as advisors warm to income products. Ten years after entering the fee-based annuity market, MassMutual Ascend says nearly half its lifetime sales came in the past two years alone - but barriers remain among fee-only advisors. AUG 13, 2026 MassMutual Ascend, the wholly owned subsidiary of Mass Mutual wth a focus on the RIA channel, is celebrating a milestone in the growing adoption of advisory annuities. MassMutual Ascend has crossed $2 billion in lifetime advisory annuity sales, a threshold the insurer says reflects a broader shift in how registered investment advisors think about guaranteed income inside client portfolios. The Cincinnati-based insurer said the figure was built on relationships with more than 1,700 investment advisor representatives across nearly 1,000 RIAs that now write annuity business through the platform. What stands out in the numbers, the company said, is the pace of adoption in the past two years, with roughly $900 million of its advisory annuity sales coming through the door in 2025 and 2026. "Ten years ago, we entered this space with the belief that annuities would become an increasingly important part of advisors' retirement planning conversations," Joe Maringer, senior vice president and national sales manager at MassMutual Ascend, said in a statement. "This milestone is evidence of that momentum." MassMutual Ascend traces the milestone back to 2016, when it launched what it describes as the industry's first advisory fixed-indexed annuity - a product built specifically for advisors operating under a fee-based, rather than commission-based, model. Since then, the company has broadened its advisory lineup to include fixed, fixed-indexed and registered index-linked annuities, chasing a fiduciary channel that has historically been resistant to insurance products. MassMutual Ascend has also been ranked by LIMRA as the top provider in advisory fixed-indexed annuity sales for eight consecutive quarters, the company said. The case for annuities inside a fee-based practice rests on the fact that a dollar allocated to an annuity can be structured to generate more guaranteed lifetime income than a dollar in a comparable fixed-income allocation; that comes down mostly to how risk pooling happens across a large group of policyholders. Mammoth asset managers like BlackRock and State Street have taken notice over the past few years, placing annuities into the target-date products that end up on the menus made available to countless retirement plan participants. "When these asset managers are acknowledging that fact and bringing annuities in for income and in their own products, that has to speak to the individual advisors and firms who think they can do it themselves," David Lau, founder and CEO of DPL Financial, previously told InvestmentNews. Belle Bielawska, national key account manager at MassMutual Ascend, framed the trend as a shift in how advisors and clients view the category altogether. "As retirement challenges become more complex, we're seeing greater appreciation for the role modern annuities can play and the unique outcomes they're designed to deliver, like defined protection and contractual income, which can be difficult to replicate elsewhere," Bielawska said in a written statement. Despite the RIA channel's prospects as the next growth frontier for annuities, there are still real challenges holding them back. Aside from implementaton bottlenecks and the historical gap in fee-based options, the complexity of annuties has also kept a lid on how comfortable advisors can get recommending them. For fiduciary advisors, it may also be easier to justify other low-cost options when considering their clients' best interest. Matt Clifford, a former Pacific Life annuities strategy leader who now consults for insurance and annuity organizations, also sees a mismatch between how carriers design and roll out new annuity products, and how RIAs approach planning for clients. "Carriers frequently adjust product design and sales capacity to align with shifting economic conditions, capital markets, and internal risk or return objectives," Clifford said in a LinkedIn note. "Over the past two decades, this has driven notable shifts in product focus." In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, he said low interest rates and rampant market volatility, along with more stringent capital reserve requirements for financial institutions, pushed carriers to pivot from variable annuities with guaranteed living benefits to more capital-efficient fixed products. "As interest rates rose sharply in 2022 and 2023, carriers leaned into multi-year guaranteed annuities (MYGAs) and fixed indexed annuities (FIAs), which offered competitive yields, strong consumer appeal, and more favorable spread economics," he said. "These shifts, while operationally sound, create downstream friction as advisors and wholesalers must reorient their positioning, retrain, and reshape client conversations." While firms operating in the brokerage model may be able to manage those frictions thanks to incentives such as commssions and marketing support, Clfford argued those buttons aren't available to RIAs, who "tend to take a longer-term, more stable view of portfolio construction and client strategy. "To close that gap, carriers should work to identify and deeply understand the core financial planning principles RIAs manage to, and build a set of stable, fitting solutions that align with those principles," he said. "Just as important, they must demonstrate a willingness to stand behind those solutions across changing macro and market environments."
MassMutual announced today the completion of the acquisition of American Financial Group, Inc.'s wholly owned subsidiary, Great American Life Insurance Company.