How lending can keep advisors inside bigger client decisions
IN Partnership with
Linda Bestepe saw clients borrowing, buying, and moving money beyond their advisor’s reach, so MassMutual expanded its shelf to bring those conversations back
More
“WE HAVE work to do.”
That was one of Linda Bestepe’s first thoughts when she arrived at MassMutual to build out its lending and banking capabilities. The advisor relationship was already well developed around investments and there was a glaring opportunity to strengthen the other side of a client’s balance sheet. Clients could be making major borrowing decisions elsewhere, not giving any thought for those conversations with their own advisor.
“I saw an advisor relationship that was deep on one side of the balance sheet and the opportunity to truly strengthen it on the other side,” says Bestepe, head of wealth banking and strategic partnerships at MassMutual.
Four years later, MassMutual has expanded that shelf but not quite in the form Bestepe imagined. It came from the conversations her team was having with advisors, and from the financing needs that kept surfacing in their client relationships.
For 175 years, MassMutual has stood beside generations through life’s defining moments, guided by a clear, enduring purpose: We help people secure their future and protect the ones they love. What began in 1851 as a bold idea rooted in neighbors helping neighbors has grown into one of America’s largest mutual life insurance companies, serving more than four million customers with over $1 trillion in life insurance in force and $584 billion in assets under management.
MassMutual offers a broad range of products and services across protection, accumulation, wealth management, and retirement income, including annuities through our leading annuity provider, MassMutual Ascend.
What lending adds beyond performance
Deepens relationships in ways that are hard to replicate
“I saw an advisor relationship that was deep on one side of the balance sheet and a glaring opportunity to strengthen it on the other side”
Linda Bestepe,
MassMutual Wealth Management
MML Investors Services, LLC (MMLIS), MassMutual’s broker-dealer and registered investment advisor subsidiary, built the MassMutual Wealth Management Secured Credit Line in partnership with Supernova Lending, LLC, in addition to the established referral relationships that provide access to business lending, investment banking, and securities-backed lending solutions. Bestepe does not expect clients to walk into an advisor meeting asking about any of those solutions.
The clues clients leave behind
The products came later than the broader idea. MassMutual wanted advisors looking at more than the investment account and paying closer attention to the moments when a client’s plans create a need for cash.
Bestepe calls those moments triggers. “It’s that unexpected emergency. It’s that sale of a business. It’s that concentrated stock position, the real estate purchase, Sally’s college education expense,” she says. A leaking roof can do it. So can the tax obligations that come with greater wealth.
The portfolio may have been built for years, but the expense often arrives on a much shorter timetable.
“If the client needs the cash and it’s on a timeline where the portfolio was not designed to support it, that’s where that intersection happens,” Bestepe says.
The instinct in that moment is often to sell; however, she wants advisors to pause first. Liquidating a position to meet an immediate need can trigger a taxable event and permanently alter a strategy built for something else entirely. Borrowing against the portfolio, through a securities-backed line of credit for instance, can help keep the client invested while still meeting the need.
“It comes down to the cost of it, against the opportunity cost of being out in the market,” Bestepe says. Borrowing can make sense when “the potential benefits of remaining invested outweigh the cost of debt” or when “the need is short-term and selling would create a permanent consequence.”
For clients raised to treat any debt beyond a mortgage as a lapse in judgement, that argument requires reframing. Debt, Bestepe says, “shouldn’t be looked at as an afterthought.” It belongs in the same conversation as cash flow, retirement income, business needs, and a family’s plans for the years ahead, not introduced only in an emergency.
“A client or a prospective client will rarely say, ‘I need a loan,’” Bestepe says. What she hears instead are the offhand remarks that surface in an ordinary review: a couple finally ready to buy the second home they have discussed for years, education expenses that have outpaced a 529 plan, a business partner who may eventually want to buy someone out.
“The discipline for advisors is to treat those offhand comments as meaningful data,” Bestepe says.
Advisors do not need to become lending experts Many avoid the lending conversation altogether, often outsourcing the ask because they do not see themselves as equipped for it. To counteract that, her team joins calls with advisors and their clients directly, supplying the technical expertise so the advisor can stay focused on the relationship.
“They tend to say, ‘I’m not an expert in this,’” Bestepe says. “You don’t need to be.”
The discussion may start with cash flow, retirement income, a planned purchase, or a business transition. It does not lead with lending, but rather brings lending into the conversation when a liquidity need is identified. The technical work can come later, with MassMutual’s lending and banking team brought in where needed.
The products themselves also came out of those advisor conversations. Referral partnerships expanded access to business lending, investment banking, and securities-backed lending. The SCL followed feedback around ease of use and the need for competitive client rates.
“We’re not trying to be the biggest at what we can do,” she says, adding that this approach has shaped the team she built alongside the product shelf. “Our first client is the advisor. We’re trying to be the best at what we know our clients and our advisors need.”
Beyond the portfolio
The value of the shelf is ultimately measured by how it strengthens the advisor relationship.
A client who needs $500,000 for a property purchase or capital for a business does not stop being an investment client while making that decision. Yet without a lending conversation, the advisor may only see the consequence later, once assets have been sold or financing has been arranged somewhere else.
“That gap allowed clients to make major borrowing decisions entirely outside the advisor’s view,” Bestepe says.
That matters commercially as well as from a planning perspective. Bestepe describes lending as an opportunity for advisors to discover unmet wealth management needs and the ability to preserve those assets. An advisor may be able to help a client fund a purchase without dismantling an investment strategy, while also gaining a clearer view of what is happening elsewhere in the client’s financial life.
Published October 19, 2026
Share
“Our first client is the advisor. We’re trying to be the best at what we know our clients and our advisors need”
Linda Bestepe,
MassMutual Wealth Management
Helps protect the practice regardless of market performance
Creates another avenue for asset acquisition
Keeps assets from walking out the back door
Gives advisors more direct insight into client behavior
Spot the trigger before discussing the solution
The advisor’s role in the lending conversation
Understand the client’s broader funding needs
Compare borrowing with selling assets
Know when to bring in technical expertise
Keep the decision inside the planning relationship
The client relationship can deepen only so far when decisions involving some of the largest movements of money a client makes are taking place somewhere else.
Lending may uncover a new share of wallet opportunities and can help keep existing assets invested. It can help solidify the client relationship, in Bestepe's words, by giving an advisor a clearer window into how a client actually manages money day to day.
The buildout at MassMutual has therefore been as much about changing what advisors listen for as adding capabilities. Bestepe knew when she arrived that the investment side of the relationship was already established. Her job was to give advisors something useful on the other side of the balance sheet when those conversations surfaced.
“It repositions the advisor from the person who manages my money to the person who helps manage my financial life,” Bestepe says. “And being involved in financial decisions can help keep assets from walking out the back door.”
Find out more
MassMutual Wealth Management is a marketing name for MML Investors Services, LLC, a subsidiary of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. Securities and investment advisory services offered through qualified representatives of MML Investors Services, LLC. (MMLIS) Member SIPC. 1295 State Street, Springfield, MA 01111 0001.
Business lending solutions are offered through referral relationships with affiliated entities and unaffiliated third-party providers. Investment banking services are offered through referral relationships with unaffiliated third-party providers. Securities-backed lending solutions, including the MassMutual Wealth Management Secured Credit Line, are offered through referral relationships with unaffiliated third-party providers. MMLIS has a referral relationship with Supernova to make MassMutual Wealth Management Secured Credit Line (MMWM SCL) available to MMLIS clients.
Loans under the Secured Credit Line are made and serviced by Supernova Lending, LLC (“Supernova”), a non-bank state-licensed lender, at its sole discretion. Supernova has no commitment to either extend any line of credit and any extension of credit is subject to credit approval by Supernova and, if approved, the terms in the definitive line of credit and security agreement documents. For information about Supernova’s lending licenses, please visit: www.supernovacompanies.com/legal/licenses. Supernova will compensate MMLIS for its role in the application and loan origination process, but MMLIS is not the lender, does not service the Loans and does not make credit approval, underwriting, or other lending decisions related to the Secured Credit Line. MMWM SCL loans are collateralized by securities held in MMLIS brokerage account(s).
The Secured Credit Line is not available in Mississippi, Nevada, North Dakota, or Puerto Rico. Other lending solutions may not be available in all states.
Securities backed loans involve risk and may not be appropriate for everyone. They carry a number of risks, including the risk of a market downturn. If the value of pledged securities drops below a certain level, the borrower will be required to pay down the loan, pledge additional securities and/or liquidate collateral. Liquidating collateral could give rise to potential tax liability. Variable-rate loans involve interest rate risk. If interest rates rise, the cost of borrowing may increase.