Chadd Watson, LUTCF, RICP, is an unabashed people person with a passion for helping others achieve their goals.

Watson was born and raised in Utah. He spent his early career as a high school football coach and photography and multimedia teacher. After he started a family, however, he began looking for other opportunities and found one through a close friend who was a claims manager with State Farm. Watson wasn’t sure if insurance was a good fit for him at first. However, after he started talking to agents, he was impressed to find them genuine and caring, so he decided to give it a try. He became a State Farm agent in 2007. After five years, State Farm asked him to lead a team of agents in Northern Nevada, where he and his family have stayed since.

Throughout the month of February, NAIFA will be showing our appreciation for our members with articles on the Advisor Today platform and in social media posts. Our first print 2022 issue of Advisor Today magazine will mail exclusively to NAIFA members this month, with articles highlighting NAIFA President Lawrence Holzberg, LUTCF, LACP, NAIFA award recipients, attendees of NAIFA’s National Leadership Conference and Belong event, and much more.

Please take the opportunity this month to share your love for NAIFA with fellow members, colleagues, clients, and consumers. Share our social media and blog posts or create your own! Tell everyone how NAIFA has strengthened our industry or helped your career.

I Love NAIFA Month is also our opportunity to express our love and appreciation for our members and the crucial work you do, providing financial security and opportunity for Americans in every community across the country. It’s our way of saying “thank you” for your membership and for doing your part to make NAIFA the leading association of insurance and financial professionals in the United States.

NAIFA-CT's Richard Terhune, a loyal NAIFA member since 2008, will present a special webinar on Thursday, February 3, 2022. The event will feature two real-life stories of the power of life insurance on the lives of families across the country.

Terhune and his client, Sara Mathews Dixon, were selected as recipients of the Life Happens' Real Life Stories program. When Sara's husband died unexpectedly, his life insurance policy protected her and their three children from financial hardship.

Don't miss this impactful and inspiring webinar on February 3, 2022, at 2 pm eastern.

Statistics show 96% of people over the age of 65, many of whom are your clients, are enrolled in Medicare Parts A and B. For decades, post-retirement medical expenses have been increasing faster than income growth. Therefore, when forecasting retirement expenses, it is important to keep up with the annual changes in Medicare costs and premiums.

Every November, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) release the medical costs for Medicare Parts A and B for the upcoming year. This includes the Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amounts (IRMAA) for Parts B and D, as well as premiums, copays, and coinsurance associated with the Medicare program.

The Q1 State of NAIFA webinar featured NAIFA President Lawrence Holzberg, LUTCF, LACP, and CEO Kevin Mayeux, CAE, who updated the association’s stakeholders on how NAIFA is serving members and the insurance and financial services industry. They also outlined NAIFA’s progress towards meeting goals established by the NAIFA 2025 Strategic Plan. The program featured a legislative and regulatory update by NAIFA Senior Vice President for Government Relations Diane Boyle.

MassMutual Tri State in Iselin, New Jersey, has become a Financial Security Guardian. 

NAIFA’s Financial Security Guardian agencies participate in NAIFA as a group and encourage their advisors to become NAIFA members. As NAIFA members, MassMutual Tri State advisors subscribe to NAIFA’s Code of Ethics and participate in NAIFA-New Jersey events, as well as NAIFA’s annual Congressional Conference. They contribute to NAIFA’s powerful advocacy voice in New Jersey and at the federal level. MassMutual Tri State advisors will also enjoy all the other benefits of membership, including professional development programming.

In January 2021, The Fortis Agency, headquartered in Holmdel, NJ, became the initial participant in NAIFA's 100% Agency program. All of the Fortis Agency's advisors became NAIFA members and received a special orientation on how they could get the most out of their memberships and maximize their participation in NAIFA. 

NAIFA has partnered with Life Happens and LIMRA in promotion of their Help Protect Our Families campaign, a national effort to shed light on Americans who are at risk due to lack of appropriate insurance and financial guidance.

With the American population in desperate need of insurance and financial services, it's more important than ever for us to reach out and engage with underserved populations. Here's how you can help.

NAIFA has recognized more than 1,000 recipients of the 2021 NAIFA Quality Awards (NQA). NAIFA Quality Awards recognize the best of our membership, the hallmark of outstanding client care for advisors. Originally created in 1945 as the National Quality Award, the award focused on recognizing outstanding performance for life insurance agents. While the award has been updated and modernized, the NQA still adheres to its core foundation, to focus on quality of care and not only on production numbers.  

If you are a financial advisor trying to grow your practice, Dean Thurman, Senior Partner of InvestWise Financial and Co-Founder of White Glove, has a few growth hacks for you.

While many advisors were down in revenue during 2020, Dean’s office showed a 5% increase.  So far in 2021, Dean’s office is showing 53% revenue growth.

Dean attributes much of his success to these 7 growth hacks that his office has put into place over the last few years.