The life insurance industry’s highest honor will be presented at the NAIFA Career Conference and Annual Meeting in October as a tribute to his more than 50 years of service and contributions to the industry.

The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA) is proud to announce Peter C. Browne, LUTCF, co-founder of Price, Raffel & Browne, as the recipient of the 74th annual John Newton Russell Memorial Award. The award is the highest honor accorded by the insurance industry to a living individual who has rendered outstanding services to the institution of life insurance.

Mr. Browne will receive the award October 4, 2015, at the NAIFA Career Conference and Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

“On behalf of the selection committee, we are pleased to recognize the remarkable achievements of Peter Browne with the 2015 John Newton Russell Memorial Award,” said Robert A. Miller, M.S., M.A., chair of the 2015 award committee. “On a more personal note, it is very gratifying for me to see Peter receive this well-deserved honor, as he contributed immeasurably to my own success. He served as a mentor and nurtured me in my career, as he did for many other agents. I consider Peter my ‘NAIFA father.’ He got me involved with NAIFA, and without him I would never have been so invested in my own success and the success of my colleagues.”

Mr. Browne began his career in the insurance industry in 1962 as an agent in the Rochester agency of the Union Central Life Insurance Company. He was a part of the Rochester Institute of Technology School of Business Work Block Program as a college agent. He became the Rochester agency manager in 1964, where he recruited and mentored numerous agents who went on to great success. In 1970, the Union Central Life Insurance Company sent Mr. Browne to New York City as an aspiring manager of the C.B. Knight Agency, which at one time was considered to be one of the country’s largest life insurance general agencies.

In 1984, Mr. Browne along with Arnold Price and Stuart Raffel founded Price, Raffel & Browne. With offices in New York and Los Angeles, the company now is one of the largest pension and profit-sharing consultants in the United States.

Mr. Browne has qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table continuously for over four decades, earning membership in the MDRT Top of the Table for the last 30 consecutive years. He is an inaugural inductee into the Union Central Life Hall of Fame. As agency managers, Mr. Browne and his partners have won numerous awards, including the President’s Trophy and Crystal Trophy.

Mr. Browne served for years on the NAIFA Board of Trustees and as treasurer of the national organization. He is a past-president of NAIFA-New York State, as well as NAIFA-New York City. He has served on the Board of Trustees of The American College and is currently the immediate past chairman of the American College Foundation Board. At The American College, he was instrumental in creating and funding the Larry R. Pike Chair in Insurance and Investments. In 2010, The American College awarded Mr. Browne the President’s Trophy, and in 2012 Mr. Browne was awarded the Huebner Gold Medal along with his good friend and past John Newton Russell Award recipient Alan Press, CLU, LUTCF. Mr. Browne is a past member of the Life Happens Board of Trustees and a past member of the national board of the Life Underwriters Training Council and the board of GAMA International.

“I was thrilled to learn that Peter Browne is the 2015 John Newton Russell Memorial Award recipient,” said NAIFA President Juli McNeely, LUTCF, CFP, CLU. “His service to his clients and colleagues as well as to industry organizations like NAIFA, The American College and GAMA International epitomizes the exceptional dedication and talent that this honor was created to recognize.”

John Henry Russell created the John Newton Russell Award in 1942 as a tribute to his father, an influential leader in the life insurance industry and an early advocate of agent education. John Newton Russell served as NAIFA (then NALU) president from 1916 to 1917 and was a contributing founder of LIMRA International, The American College and the Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) designation.