June Is National Annuity Awareness Month

In the highly competitive insurance industry, brokers and agencies are constantly seeking new ways to drive growth. Agents must reach sales targets, and agencies must attract and retain high-performing talent. Fortunately, innovations in digital sales platforms are making these goals achievable.

John Boothman of NAIFA partner iLife Technologies will give you actionable tips on how to incorporate more digital solutions into your business to drive growth and keep up in today's ever-changing market.

Matt Wagner of NAIFA Business Performance Center Partner, Client Focus, shares what agents and advisors need to know about AI and what it means for the industry.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the masses came online in December. It’s called ChatGPT. You can communicate with it at openai.com. It gives impressive answers to hard questions in seconds. Many think it will put Google search out of business. Maybe put schools out of business. AI is coming like a wrecking ball for repetitive, commodity work.

What about insurance agents? I was going to share my thoughts, but then it hit me.

Why not just ask AI?

So I did.

In the past, I have written about lead generation solutions as well as tracking clients on customer relationship management tools (CRMs) and marketing programs, but there hasn’t been a focus on lead conversions. At an industry conference this year, I learned about Phonexa, the company working to bridge the gap to generate more sales from leads. It’s important that advisors, especially those who run agencies and invest heavily in lead generation through marketing, learn about maximizing those leads.  

As we move past the first quarter of 2022 and look ahead to the next several months, the world of technology in our industry continues to rapidly evolve and expand before our eyes. In early March 2022, my company InsurTech Express exhibited at the iPipeline Connections Conference in Las Vegas where insurance technologies took center stage. Companies like Bestow, Ethos, and Covr Financial have grown rapidly with investor funding to offer robust life insurance-focused solutions to their consumers.

Technology is being used more than ever to make it easier for advisors to complete insurance transactions with their clients without the cumbersome pain points present in a currently antiquated process. Gone are the days of 45-page applications, two-month underwriting timelines, and intrusive health examinations for coverage. The industry is full of thriving start-ups and established companies helping insurance consumers buy coverage in minutes, not weeks. Like many industries driven by technology, there continues to be development and investment from well know firms in the market. 

Join us on January 11, 2022, at 1 pm eastern for "Financial Technology that Builds Long-Term Relationships for Long-Term Care," a special webinar presented by Carefull co-founder Todd Rovak and product strategy lead Michael Rubel.

Rovak and Rubel will discuss the challenge of client engagement and how Carefull's technology can help overcome it. The webinar will also feature a Q&A with NAIFA-National President-Elect Bryon Holz speaking on his own experience with long-term care insurance and how it has affected his family.

NAIFA's Limited and Extended Care Planning Center (LECP) Impact Week, November 1-5, was a unique virtual event including a one-hour session covering a different type of topic each day by speakers who are industry experts and industry leaders. On Thursday, November 4, the topic was “Technology Shark Tank: Taking the Robot Out of the Advisor/Agent.” You’ve got questions and these presenters have answers! How do I take the busy “robotic” tasks out of my practice to make it more profitable? How do I stay in contact with current clients while seeking new clients? Which technology fits my practice and budget? At what point do I invest in my practice so that I can expand my outreach and professionalism? This “shark tank” style session offers four rapid-fire presentations!

NAIFA LECP Impact Week will feature industry leaders for a panel discussion on "Technology Shark Tank: Taking the Robot out of the Advisor/Agent.”

The panel will address how to use the right technology to increase your profit, outreach, and professionalism. Ken Leibow, Founder and CEO of InsurTech Express, will moderate the discussion.

There are countless horror stories where people have had their identity stolen and their bank accounts wiped out. 80% of victims will continue to use the Internet despite the risks because that’s the world we live in today. I want to focus on giving you tips to protect your privacy and help you function every day securely for both personal and business.

Small and midsize businesses have many challenges in common when it comes to HR technology. In most cases, these challenges can be overcome by using a single human resource management system – sometimes called human capital management (HCM) system – that can:

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of “Client Relationship Management Systems” CRMs in the marketplace. I am selectively going to talk about some of the more popular or industry CRMs, yet not purposely excluding any specific vendor or CRM product. You can identify CRMs in 1 of 3 categories: Generic, Industry Specific, or Home Grown. The CRM companies that are Generic like the big names: SalesForce, Microsoft, and Oracle for example are powerful products. These Fortune 500 companies have figuratively unlimited resources to setup their software to fit your practice. Typically this can be a little more on the expensive side, but makes sense with a larger agency that has many advisors. I would be wary about a generic CRM solution from a small vendor because even though you can license it at a lower cost, you may find them to be problematic for a many reasons like incompatibility for integrating data and limited functionality. There are some new popular generic CRMs from middle size companies like like Zoho and HubSpot that are really easy to use and setup with a lot of functionality. It is easy to gravitate to Industry specific CRMs because they are practically ready to use right out of the box. See information on some industry specific CRMs below.