The wholesaler’s job is shifting from distributing products to helping advisors use them well. InspereX is also using that shift to bring new advisors into structured products.
Through October, InspereX wholesaled $15.64 billion of US structured products, according to the firm, and it ranks among the three largest wholesalers in SP Intelligence’s league table in its first full year of coverage. It pairs that scale with lifecycle servicing and a deliberate focus on advisors who have never used structured products. That has earned InspereX Best Wholesaler at the SP Intelligence USA 2026 Awards for Excellence.
The link in the middle
InspereX describes its role as the strategic link between issuers and the financial professionals who need investment solutions for their clients. Over the past year it has widened that role through partnerships: the launch of the Aria platform with Luma Financial Technologies and SUBSCRIBE, fixed income trading capabilities with Fi-Tek, annuity distribution with AuguStar Retirement, and the acquisition of Financial Northeastern Securities to strengthen its certificates of deposit and credit union share certificate distribution.
“The model is evolving from traditional product distribution toward a more integrated combination of market intelligence, product curation, technology, education, and lifecycle support,” says Scott Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer of InspereX. Its shelf now spans structured investments, fixed income, annuities, ETFs, mutual funds and alternative investments, curated with broker-dealers, trade desks and issuers to fit each firm’s guidelines.
Beyond the trade
Servicing is where wholesalers differ most, and InspereX treats the trade as the start of the relationship. Its team monitors upcoming maturities, autocalls and issuer calls, and begins working with the advisor 90 days before each event to plan reinvestment around the client’s objectives. Advisors can track their whole structured products book through InspereX’s online hubs, which also host FINRA-reviewed educational material they can share with clients.
For RIAs, InspereX went further. Aria, launched in December 2025 with Luma and SUBSCRIBE, gives RIAs access to fixed income through InspereX’s BondNav technology, structured products and alternative investments, with insights and lifecycle management under one login.
What advisors bought
Callable growth notes were among the fastest-growing areas of advisor demand, Mitchell says, and memory features gained ground in income notes as advisors grew more comfortable with how they support income through different markets. The S&P 500, Nasdaq-100 and Russell 2000 remained the most used underlyings in the independent broker-dealer and RIA channels, on their own and in worst-of structures, alongside growing demand for QIS strategies.
The wider market data points the same way. Through September, QIS-linked notes more than doubled to $8.53 billion, worst-of notes grew 67.1% to $84.79 billion and income notes 65.5% to $96.92 billion, all well ahead of the market’s 36.5%, according to SP Intelligence data.
Widening the market
The strongest new adoption came from RIAs and first-time users, and InspereX treats that as a priority rather than a by-product. Each year, according to the firm, it brings more than 1,700 new advisors into structured products and reactivates nearly 900 who had stepped away. Year to date in 2026, more than 175 RIA firms have begun doing business with InspereX for the first time. “Our focus benefits the entire ecosystem,” Mitchell says. “Advisors gain more ways to meet client objectives, while issuers and dealer desks reach a larger, more active market.”
Education remains central to that effort. Advisors need help understanding “not only how a product works, but where it fits, what risks it introduces, and how to explain it clearly to clients,” Mitchell says.
The next phase
InspereX expects the wholesaler’s role to become more consultative and more technology-enabled as products, platforms and wrappers such as structured ETFs multiply. It has introduced a formal, firm-wide process to embed AI in its workflows, from note-taking to prospecting and tracking securities, and is expanding its team. “Technology isn’t replacing high-touch, human service; it’s allowing us to deliver it more effectively and at greater scale,” Mitchell says.
As structured products reach more advisors, the wholesaler’s job is no longer just to sell the next note. InspereX is betting it is to grow the number of advisors who use them.
Source: SP Intelligence, part of WSD. Market data covers US structured products across all wrappers, 1 January to 30 September 2026, compared with the same period of 2025. InspereX volume and advisor figures as reported by InspereX.
