# Gilgal General, Inc.

Building the next great American electronic trading exchange marketplace-NASDAQ

## Elevator pitch
We are a marketplace. A trading platform. An electronic trading exchange for annuities. We are building an electronic trading exchange for annuities to make annuities exchange-traded contracts (exchange-traded annuities), and help retirees here in the US and elsewhere offload portions of their retirement savings (401k, IRA) to insurance companies in exchange for retirement guaranteed income at the exchange. All done electronically.

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/gilgal.general
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:80206
- Last updated: 2026-06-17T05:02:03Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-18T03:10:40Z

## Quick facts
- The world’s first global annuity contracts electronic trading exchange: the NASDAQ for annuities.
- Founder has 20+ years of Wall Street trading experience at Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, UBS, RBC.
- $225B annuity sales market ripe for technological innovation & disruption.
- $2.13T US annuity contracts outstanding + $20B in annual US pension annuity sales.
- US insurance companies eager to be part of the electronic trading exchange platform.
- 4 year contract agreement/partnership with ICE - InterContinental Exchange for market data share.
- The first buy & sell exchange-traded annuity contracts boasts NO commissions, NO surrender charges.
- Tight-knit founding team worked together in bond trading at RBC Capital Markets for almost 5 years.

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:43470: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:43571: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## Story
The world’s first trading exchange platform unites retirees and insurance companies in one central, electronic trading marketplace for annuity contracts—eliminating commission fees, making contracts market-traded, and providing retirees with a guaranteed income and peace of mind.Retirement used to be simple and predictable, but the math has changed... and planning for retirement is now a gamble many retirees simply can’t affordMany big promises offered by annuities evaporate once rates are adjusted and fees kick in—fees buried deep in the contract or not shown at all. These include but are not limited to: commission, underwriting, fund management, penalties, tax opportunity cost, and tax to beneficiaries…Gilgal General is building the world’s first electronic marketplace for annuity contracts, giving retirees and investors the ability to transfer retirement savings (401Ks, IRAs) to insurance companies, and purchase contracts directly from a trading exchange without paying commission fees to brokers and investment advisersExchange-traded annuity contracts will trade in the same way as current exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on the stock exchange, such as BlackRock iShares ETFs or State Street Spiders. This enables retirees and investors to purchase annuity contracts from an electronic trading exchange—commission-free.Created in collaboration with insurer partners, our exchange trading platform brings annuities directly to a market trading exchange, bypassing the middlemen—brokers and investment advisers—keeping more money in the pockets of our retirees.Gilgal takes an incredibly complex solution and boils it down to a stunningly simple and efficient process for retirees : 1) select the annuity contract type straight from your brokerage account or workplace retirement platform, 2) analyze current market quotes, 3) submit order. The contract order is executed in seconds, not weeks like with current systems.Gilgal’s founder and key software engineers have worked together for nearly 6 years, boasting previous experience with all the big names in capital markets. Strategic advisors include the VP and the Managing Director at Goldman Sachs.The 2019 SECURE Act annuity provision lets employers carry annuities on workplace retirement plans without incurring fiduciary liability risk. Similar to how the 2006 Pension Protection Act (PPA) paved the way for auto-enrollment and auto-increase in workplace retirement plans, the 2019 SECURE Act will have a huge market adoption impact in the workplace retirement savings market.With nearly $2.13T in current outstanding annuity contracts and $225B in annual sales, now’s the time for Gilgal. With the right technology execution and the right incentive mechanisms to insurer partners and retirement platform providers, Gilgal is uniquely positioned to capture this fast-growing market.Multiple additional moats of revenue, in combination with our incredible traction of member-insurer firms to launch our unique and disruptive exchange, enables us to project ARR (annual recurring revenue) of $79.5M by 2024-2025.By building multiple platforms and engines for retirees and insurers, Gilgal is bringing the previously offline, bespoke, and manual annuity contract into the future with ambitious goals and milestones.Gilgal General: a unique opportunity and a tireless commitment to solving a huge, fast-growing problem. 10,000 Americans retire every day. We’ve built cutting-edge technology that could truly make a difference for all of them. Join us in capitalizing on a huge market opportunity while giving retirees peace of mind

## FAQ
1. **1) Can you give a brief overview of how you came up with the term “Breads” to describe your product? Also, is that designation set in stone or possibly still in flux? 2) From the pitch, it looks like there won’t be a product launch until later this year. With that in mind, can...**
   - Hi Kevin. That's a great questions. 1)Because we are helping retirees/investors buy electronically traded annuities contracts through an exchange to provide them guaranteed retirement income from insurance companies, "Breads" represents income for life, giving retirees provision or "bread" in their retirement age. 2) We have build quite a lot of technology: 1) the trade match engine, 2) the trade order entry routing system (critical foundations), 3)the trade order entry interface for insurers...
2. **So you are the trading platform or you are using being traded on a trading platform?**
   - Hi Tal, Many thanks for the question. We are the trading platform. We are building a trading exchange/platform that will list live annuity contracts to be traded on liquid electronic trading exchange. Think of us like NASDAQ but for annuity contracts.
3. **How do you envision these actually trading given there can be all sorts of different types of annuities? Different monthly amounts, different start dates, lump sums, etc. What would it look like to the retiree trying to buy one off of your exchange?**
   - Hi Aaron, Many thanks for the question. It's a great question. We are building the contracts to be standardized. Standardized monthly contracts payments for all annuity types across the contract maturity spectrum. Think of a futures trading exchange. For example, May 2026 fixed annuity contract (5yr fixed annuity), that starts paying this May. So an investor buying this 5yr fixed contract will get paid pro-rata (in between months) and every month, this contract will "roll" to the next month (...
4. **Hello, I currently work in the Pension Risk Transfer space and I’m very excited to see your idea come to life. I believe there is massive upside to this idea. Before I invest, I have a few questions I’m hoping you can address. 1. If you are an individual buying an annuity, one...**
   - Hi Eric, It's very nice to meet you. Great questions. I'm happy to have a call or 15 minute Zoom with you if you like to give you all the details. But will address your questions here for the general audience. 1) The contracts are standardized among all the insurers at the exchange and the contracts are also risk-based (margined). This means that each contract that each insurer bids for and wins at the exchange must be margined/risked (the insurer must post capital for each trade/contract). T...
5. **Hi Alexander, It’s definitely an interesting idea, my question is, when building this marketplace, what incentives do the sellers of the annuities (i.e. insurance groups, etc..) have in participating in this setup? Is it worth it for them to forgo the commission they make in t...**
   - Hi Amit, It's great to meet you. Great question. So insurers don't get paid commissions. Rather, they pay upfront commissions to advisers/brokers to sell/distribute the annuities for them. This is a cost to the insurers because they lack distribution infrastructure. By setting up a trading exchange, insurers effectively bypasses the commissions they were paying brokers/advisers to sell/distribute annuities to retirees for them. Exchange traded annuities will be directly listed on the trading ...

## Team
- Alexander Ampontuah (Founder/CEO)
- Bo Qian (Software Engineer)
- Cenray Gangadharan (Software Engineer)
- Grant Eldred (Adviser)
- Leon H. Tatevossian (Adviser)
- Stan Lewis (Adviser)

## Recent posts
- Gilgal General Investor Update (2024-06-15T05:59:59Z)

## Q&A
- Q: Hello, I currently work in the Pension Risk Transfer space and I’m very excited to see your idea come to life. I believe there is massive upside to this idea. Before I invest, I have a few questions I’m hoping you can address. 1. If you are an individual buying an annuity, one of the things you will look for is a high quality company that will be able to payout all future payments. How do you ensure that only high quality insurance companies are buying up these contracts and meet the necessary regulatory reserve and capital requirements? 2. Usually annuities need quite some convincing from a financial advisor, how do you plan to acquire customers and convince them to buy annuities on the exchange? 3. Will there be any life contingent contracts, if so, will there be any underwriting? 4. Will you handle the customer data, payments, and billing or would the insurance companies handle this?
  - A: Hi Eric, It's very nice to meet you. Great questions. I'm happy to have a call or 15 minute Zoom with you if you like to give you all the details. But will address your questions here for the general audience. 1) The contracts are standardized among all the insurers at the exchange and the contracts are also risk-based (margined). This means that each contract that each insurer bids for and wins at the exchange must be margined/risked (the insurer must post capital for each trade/contract). This capital that they post are also serving as their capital reserve. Because all insurers are posting capital as a function of risk they take, the exchange essentially become self-cleansing (the member-insurers monitors each other for credit risk). High quality insurers will have the capital to be dominant at the exchange vs low quality/low-rated insurers. Also, because of capital requirements at the exchange for the insurers, we set risk limits for each insurer as a function credit. 2) We plan on bringing this to the retirement platforms/record keepers (Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab and etc - think SECURE Act). Because annuities are now allowed in workplace retirement menus, we are asking the record keepers/retirement platforms to plug this into their retirement plan menus and allow workplace employees to auto-invest on b-weekly basis (much like current mutual funds or ETFs). This will create volume flow to the exchange for the insurers to bid on incoming flow. And then give a cut of our revenue to the record keepers/retirement platforms for the volume flow they are bringing to the exchange (incentive). We are not dis-intermediating the advisers here, we are just giving consumers/retirees the ability to but annuity contracts without the current fee structure, and we will provide the advisers the same incentive economics as we will give to the retirement platforms (incentive will be volume-driven). 3) The response above to question 1 answers this question somewhat (think all contracts having 1 standardization. We will have room for bespoke contracts but that will most likely be later stage as some insurers will want to have some unique "offerings" to the market. 3 insurers have asked for this. But in the beginning my goal is to keep things simple and easy and go from there. 4) We will take care of the customer payments (think about the clearinghouse piece of what we are building). The clearinghouse will take care of the payments flow.
- Q: @Alex: I've done an in-depth analysis of your company and the investment opportunity. Would you be open for a follow-up interview, I have a few key questions. +++ TAM is huge with $219 billion in 2020. +++ The financial retirement market is ripe for innovation, key trends are automation, digitizing existing high-touch processes, and standardizing products. +++ The timing is right with the 2019 SECURE Act. +++ Gilgal General has been able to balance powerful incentives to get market participants to adopt this new technology solution. --- Investors are getting in before proven product-market fit. --- There is plenty of time to run into tech-related issues before product is market-ready. https://capvee.substack.com/p/crowdfunding-pick-insurtech-that Olof | Twitter: @Olof_Capvee CAPVEE | Helping retail investors uncover the best private market opportunities. capvee.com
  - A: Hi Olof. It's great to meet you. We are on to something special. I'm open for a discussion sometime early next week. Let me know a time that works for you. My Calendly invite is attached. Speak to you then.
- Q: Hi Alexander Ampontuah Is this electronic trading marketplace for annuities going to function like NYSE? Another question is this startup going to be a unicorn meaning that has a billion dollar valuation which creates wealthy people like those people who invested in a pre ipo Facebook or amazon
- Q: Hi Alexander, Thank you for generously answered my questions! I like the answers very much: big insurers participating in pilot, big profit business, 6 patents to be filed. All good. I am almost ready to invest with just a few more questions: 1) I know that retirees and investors don’t have to pay commissions. But what is the attraction for the insurers? Do they pay less fees than the current manual system? Or do they just get bigger volume of transactions by using your system? 2) Do you offer volume discount (transaction) to big insurers? 3) Do speed and performance of transactions matter to your exchange? What is theoretical limit of maximum transactions per day? How is the scalability (on transactions) of your system? -John Hwung
  - A: Hi John, Many thanks for the questions. They are great questions. 1) the attraction for insurers is that we are eliminating a friction point for them by removing commissions for retirees/investors which in turn will drive up more volume to the exchange. Commissions is a big hinderance to adoption and we are solving that. As Robinhood has proven, when you eliminate a pain point like commissions, adoption tends to open up. 2) Yes, we will be offering volume discounts to insurers who are more active at the exchange. 3) Yes, execution speed will matter. Trades will be executed in milli-seconds. Like typical stock exchanges. There is no limit per day. It will be more a function of trade volumes per second. The system is built to handle as much volume as possible. It's a matching algorithm - matching trades as a function of time and price (and order type).
- Q: Hi Alexander, I have a few questions: 1) What are the sizes of the insurance companies that will beta test your platform this Sept (Large, Medium, Small)? 2) You are projecting ARR of $79.5M by 2024-2025 fiscal year. Yet, that is also the fiscal year that you will be profitable. What does profit margin looks like for the 2 years after 2024-2025 fiscal year? Is this a very low profit margin business? 3) Do you plan to file patents for your technology? Thank you! John Hwung
  - A: Hi John, It's great to meet you. Many thanks for the questions. These are great questions. 1) the 8 insurers we will be testing with are all top 20 insurers operating in the US. The US insurance sector is quite top-heavy, like most industries: the top 6 insurers makes up 72% of the market and then it becomes low single digit market shares from then on to the top 20. 2) This is a very high margin business. Think about it for second: we charge fees for trade execution at the exchange from retailers and institutions (think pension risk transfer - volume driven), and we also take a cut of 12-25% of all insurers transactions at the exchange. Both sides of the trade. The $75.5mm represents the 20% of current annuity sales volume that we expect to convert to the exchange as we work to make the annuity contract standardized and automated among all member-insurers so the contract becomes automated and exchange traded rather than manual. There is currently $225B annuity sales per year. 20% translates to $44-45B transaction volume to the exchange that we expect to bring to the exchange/online. The $75.5mm is taking 12% economics of the insurers transactions using sample fixed annuity economics (excludes the trading fees at the exchange charge to retail and institutions). This economics will change given different interest rates environments and certain contract types. 3) Yes. We have 6 patents that we are working on filing the next 1-2 months.
- Q: Hi Alexander, It’s definitely an interesting idea, my question is, when building this marketplace, what incentives do the sellers of the annuities (i.e. insurance groups, etc..) have in participating in this setup? Is it worth it for them to forgo the commission they make in the old way to increase their “dealflow” , or are there some other/different upsides for them? Thanks in advance for you thoughts.
  - A: Hi Amit, It's great to meet you. Great question. So insurers don't get paid commissions. Rather, they pay upfront commissions to advisers/brokers to sell/distribute the annuities for them. This is a cost to the insurers because they lack distribution infrastructure. By setting up a trading exchange, insurers effectively bypasses the commissions they were paying brokers/advisers to sell/distribute annuities to retirees for them. Exchange traded annuities will be directly listed on the trading exchange, standardized for all the insurers so a retiree or investor can come right to the trading exchange and insurers will bid/compete for the trade. Insurers have interests because the commission fee is eliminated from their cost structure. This also removes frictions for retirees whom the cost of the commissions were being passed onto. This increases volume flow from retirees to the trading exchange. An incentive for the insurers to participate.
- Q: How do you envision these actually trading given there can be all sorts of different types of annuities? Different monthly amounts, different start dates, lump sums, etc. What would it look like to the retiree trying to buy one off of your exchange?
  - A: Hi Aaron, Many thanks for the question. It's a great question. We are building the contracts to be standardized. Standardized monthly contracts payments for all annuity types across the contract maturity spectrum. Think of a futures trading exchange. For example, May 2026 fixed annuity contract (5yr fixed annuity), that starts paying this May. So an investor buying this 5yr fixed contract will get paid pro-rata (in between months) and every month, this contract will "roll" to the next month (next maturity bucket). Same for variable annuity contracts: we are building variable annuity contracts across 16 global equity indices giving investors choice/exposure for equity-like growth. Here, giving investors simplicity and choice by limiting their selectivity. Standardization will address and simplify the trading exchange for retirees/annuitants seeking guaranteed income from the insurers at the trading exchange. Most futures trading exchanges began this way. As we scale and grow, we can get more bespoke.
- Q: 1) Can you give a brief overview of how you came up with the term “Breads” to describe your product? Also, is that designation set in stone or possibly still in flux? 2) From the pitch, it looks like there won’t be a product launch until later this year. With that in mind, can you explain how you came up with a $9.5M valuation cap? 3) Presumably your product is for investors seeking guaranteed income. How to do you plan to attract them – in particular, those who may not be retirees? 4) When do you anticipate being profitable? 5) What’s the exit strategy?
  - A: Hi Kevin. That's a great questions. 1)Because we are helping retirees/investors buy electronically traded annuities contracts through an exchange to provide them guaranteed retirement income from insurance companies, "Breads" represents income for life, giving retirees provision or "bread" in their retirement age. 2) We have build quite a lot of technology: 1) the trade match engine, 2) the trade order entry routing system (critical foundations), 3)the trade order entry interface for insurers, 4)market data direct feed to price the annuity contracts electronically live for the insurers (partnering with ICE), 5)the risk management and the technology infrastructure for the clearinghouse risk engines, and 6) now working on the trade order entry system for investors/retirees at the retirement platforms. These are all very large and complex system builds that has taken a lot of technology build and time and will allow us to have our own trading and risk infrastructure without outsourcing a lot of it to third-parties. Few other players had this much technology build at this stage. And we have insurers interested because we are providing a different delivery solution set (electronic trading) rather than selling annuities manually through brokers. 3)We will be partnering with the retirement record keepers - Fidelity, Vanguard, Charles Schwab and etc - to bring Breads - our exchange traded annuity contracts - to their workplace retirement plan menus - in return for revenue share. 4) 2024/2025 - we should an existing technology, execution and risk infrastructure similar to NASDAQ electronic execution platform by 2024/2025 5) We believe we can build and scale an existing exchange traded annuity contract market much like the other exchanges trading infrastructures so we plan on exiting via public markets. Or we will be a very good take out partner for some of the other large exchanges or even a large money manager (BlackRock, State Street and etc) as a complement to their existing business.
- Q: I would like to invest in your startup.Is this electronic annuities exchange going to be international
- Q: Can one who already have an annuity switch over to Gilgal General? If so, what are the pros and cons of switching over?
- Q: When is the offering for gilgal general going to end
- Q: Any chance of an update, such as the product launch date. when you anticipate earning revenue, etc.?
- Q: The main picture when searching for your company just has your name on a blank white background. People won't know what your company is by your name. Just a suggestion of adding something like "annuities exchange" or something that draws people to your page along with the name. Any updates on patents?
- Q: Hi Gigal Team, Solving a great problem and market need. I have a few questions on the resource needs, 1. Technology of this sort require quite a few resources and time to build, your timeline is about Q2 2022, curious how much money would you need to make it happen in Q2 2022, I am thinking you might need more than $1.07M. 2. if you are not able to reach your max. fund raise, how would it impact your plans? 3. are you raising any parallel round with VC? if not, do you have plans to do the same?
  - A: Hi Krishnan. Many thanks for the question. Very important. Yes, the technology requirements for the full build out is more than $1.07. We are building enough technology for the insurer partners for beta testing and deployments and gather feedbacks with our insurer partners. Once the beta technology is released to insurers we will start our parallel round with VCs (traditional VCs and insurer corporate VC's) to engage in the next phase of the technology stack/build out. I anticipate us needing $3-7 million to finish the technology stack/full build out with VCs Q2 2022. I hope this helps.
- Q: Hi Alexander, thanks sorry missed that. Working in the industry, I see AXA on there. There was a divide with AXA in the US. Is the Insurer AXA or Equitable?
  - A: It's the same name /brand. The Equitable is the insurance/annuity issuance unit (life insurance unit). AXA is the parent company.