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Referred to as the “NAIFA Nation”, a very engaged and diverse association membership of insurance, accounting, legal, and financial advisors was recently brought together for NAIFA’s 2024 Conference at the Arizona Biltmore which combined for the first time their two signature association annual events – the APEX and National Leadership Conferences. Members participating were provided with advanced professional development, deep-dive education on essential financial planning topics, leadership training, and introductions to new NAIFA strategic mergers and a carefully curated team of association strategic partnerships and resources.
Driven by an accelerating rate of industry change, the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA) has been busy continuing to build comprehensive resources and engagement opportunities to support their financial members and solidify its positioning as a preeminent association for financial services professionals in the United States.
To that end, the following two NAIFA mergers, with their formidable resources, were discussed:
The Society of Financial Service Professionals (FSP) – NAIFA expanded its financial professional membership base by merging with like-minded FSP leaders and members. Financial professional resources added from the merger include access to their ongoing academic research on advanced financial planning and investment topics through The Journal of the Society of Financial Service Professionals.
Life Happens – NAIFA increased its public-facing profile by merging with this nonprofit organization with over 361,000 individual visitors to lifehappens.org annually and over 4.1billion impressions garnered from media coverage in 485 articles in 2023. It was founded in 1994 by industry leaders who recognized the need to provide the public with financial literacy, research, and educational information in a neutral and unbiased way about employing life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance, and annuities in a sound financial plan. Benefits to NAIFA members of this consumer arm include receiving curated arrays of multi-format educational content from their base of over 300 educational assets designed for timely client outreach at no cost to members.
As of 2024, NAIFA, Life Happens, and the FSP have come together as one organization. The expanded organization retains all three brands under the NAIFA umbrella and leverages each organization’s strengths to create a greater impact for the industry, financial service professionals, and consumers.
NAIFA leadership outlined how they will leverage these strategic moves to ensure members and prospective members understand the critical role NAIFA is playing in bolstering their professional success and helping them provide advanced and comprehensive financial security to American families and businesses.
Newly Reorganized Advanced Resource Centers
Centers of Excellence – NAIFA’s Centers of Excellence take a customized approach to deliver unique, diverse, and intensely relevant information to today’s advisors. The Centers are focused on specific insurance, financial, and business management subject areas and offer specialized resources. Each of these Centers are organized as specialty communities with advanced study groups, a regulatory/legislative outreach effort, and Advisory Councils made up of NAIFA sponsors, members, and subject matter experts:
Lifetime Healthcare Center (LHC) – brings together industry professionals, academia, subject matter experts, and unique resources in areas including limited and extended care, Medicare, social security, small group health insurance, and other key advanced markets needs. Members have direct access to industry leaders who will share knowledge and best practices in these increasingly complex and evolving holistic financial planning areas.
Investments, Retirement, Estate and Advanced Planning Center (IREAP) – offers content, events, and direct access to experts and thought leadership in retirement, wealth, legacy, and advanced planning market topics and concepts. This center ensures that financial advisors and other financial professionals have the most up-to-date information and access to leading experts for the most complex cases.
Business Performance Center – was designed for when financial professionals are ready to move from solo advisor to business entrepreneur. This center offers the tools and resources to build your practice and business model with access to resources including articles, webinars, programs, and more. New business performance benefits mentioned at the Conference included the Trustworthy Selling sales effectiveness training program specifically geared for financial services and the Practice Intelligence software for practice evaluation and insightful client analytics.
Brief Overview of National Leadership Conference Presentation
Suzanne Carawan, NAIFA’s Vice President of Membership, hosted and emceed the National Leadership Conference (NLC) which focuses on the acquisition, retention, and engagement of NAIFA members through creating exceptional member value and increased professional opportunities for advisors in NAIFA’s core areas of advocacy, education, and volunteer industry leadership.
The creation of the new department and selection of Carawan to lead it highlights NAIFA’s priority focus on increasing membership along with bolstering its position as the leading grassroots association for financial professionals.
“It is an honor of a lifetime to be asked to lead NAIFA’s growth strategy,” stated Carawan. “I can testify firsthand as to the strength of our expanded association, the tenacity that our members have in serving their clients, and in the absolute pride they have in their profession and the part they play in our American economy. We will work hand-in-hand with our volunteer leaders to amplify NAIFA’s brand and re-establish belonging to your association as a standard of professionalism.”
Some of the key points covered included:
A quick overview on a broad array of NAIFA programs and activities was provided, including insights into how financial professionals can get the most value from their NAIFA membership. This included an update on the ongoing expansion of new education, resources, and partners to address important issues in Medicare, Social Security, and RIA wealth management.
NAIFA’s industry leading advocacy efforts were outlined by highlighting its work at the federal, state, and local levels including their successes in defeating harmful regulations like the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule and advocating for regulations that protect the industry and consumers. The multiple benefits of financial professionals participating in advocacy were addressed and they reviewed the training and opportunities that NAIFA provides for members like their summer in-district meetings with lawmakers and educating lawmakers at one of the largest industry fly-ins to Washington D.C. They emphasized how no association operating in the financial services space, advocates for financial professionals on a federal, interstate, and state level.
A variety of NAIFA educational programs and designations like the LUTCF (Life Underwriter Training Council Fellow) was reviewed that help members strengthen their knowledge and skills.
Overall, the NLC presentation reinforced the importance of member engagement and getting actively involved in NAIFA beyond just attending meetings to actively participate through volunteer roles and leadership positions. Being able to share these powerful experiences, resources, and differentiated positioning – along with NAIFA leadership training and support – positions members in becoming an ambassador in recruiting new financial industry members to a higher level of resources, knowledge, and professionalism while also energizing and retaining existing members in local NAIFA chapters.
Highlights of NIAFA 2024 Conference Presentations:
Master AI the Easy Way for Financial Professionals – Panos Leledakis, Founder & CEO, IFA Academy enthusiastically shared a wide-ranging arsenal of readily accessible, free-to-low-cost AI tools and illustrated surprisingly practical, easy-to-do, and effective applications of those technologies that can substantially improve a financial advisor’s business, heighten client experience, and differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
Panos was armed with a mini-drone, NFC (Near-Field Communications) cards, an avatar clone, AI glasses, and a laptop projection walking through usage tips for ChatGPT/Claude, Easy Peasy, Canva AI, Perplexity.ai, Jaime, Zapier, and a slew of AI browser and other service provider extensions like CoPilot and Ask Crystal. He suggested ways to “speak” to AI models, how to create chatbots and AI assistants, explore creative content marketing, as well as “how to train” AI to give YOU advice.
Like a Master Chef breaking down the steps to create a seemingly complex dish, Panos convincingly demonstrated and offered the recipe of how the insurance and financial advisors in the audience can apply these AI tools to competitively position themselves. It was an enlightening and invigorating presentation that was also motivating for the financial professionals in the audience to take next steps to becoming tech-enabled and not fear technology.
Practice Transformation & The Impact of Technology on Your Practice – Sue Kuraja, CFBS, V.P. Brokerage Director, MassMutual Agency Brokerage and InsurTech subject matter expert led a panel including Dr. Christian Hubbs, Chief AI Scientist of Infineo (which digitizes life insurance on the blockchain), along with Kris Emick of Cambridge Investment Research, Charles Gray of Mass Mutual, and Simon Blattner of Kratzer Consulting. They discussed how they were navigating AI and technology in general and particularly the role of AI in facilitating smoother practice valuations, acquisitions, and M&A transactions.
My Client Brought up Medicare, Now What? – Carroll Golden, CLU, ChFC, CLTC, CASL, LECP, FLMI, Executive Director, NAIFA’s Centers of Excellence, led a discussion on how to effectively field Medicare questions from clients with Dan Mangus, VP of Growth & Development of Senior Marketing Specialists and Tom Morgan, VP of Life Development of American Senior Benefits. Financial professionals need to be aware of and have answers and resources on Medicare changes and issues that are in the news and on the minds of their clients that are trying to deal with the Medicare maze.
The panel delved into the complexities of the Medicare industry, particularly in light of recent regulatory changes that have created significant upheaval and the need for advisors to develop partnerships and referral networks with Medicare specialists to allow them to serve their clients’ needs.
The Risk of Not Knowing: Differentiate Your Professional Brand with Social Security Expertise – Thomas Drapala, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Registered Social Security Analysts conducted a powerful keynote presentation on the critical importance of Social Security knowledge for financial advisors to enhance their professional competency, competitive positioning, and help their clients avoid common pitfalls. He emphasized how Social Security serves as the first pivotal decision in retirement planning and why mastery of this area is essential for financial professionals. He further offered how RSSA can equip advisors with the knowledge and tools to differentiate their practice, protect their clients’ interests, and grow their business through Social Security expertise.
Movement vs. Organization: Leveraging Dynamics for Momentum and Growth – Assad Koshul, CPA, CPTD – Founder at Game Changer Mindsets, LLC gave a strong presentation on the power of mindset and approach in building successful team and community leadership outcomes by distinguishing the operational and structural dynamics of organizations from those of movements. Considering how each framework engages people demonstrates how to optimize team performance and achieve multi-dimensional growth.
Assad’s insightful analysis of clips from sports-themed movies like Invictus was able to connect theoretical concepts of organizational and movement dynamics to real-world scenarios. He provided actionable ideas on how to grow chapter membership and foster a vibrant community of financial professionals through a movement approach.
Other Strategic Partners Included
Amy Florian, CEO of Corgenius – a company that specializes in training financial professionals to support and communicate with their clients in times of transition, crisis, and grief – “The Best Advisor in Your Client’s Worst Times”.
Neil Wilding, Chief Operations Officer, Stonewood Financial – with the growing risk of rising taxes in retirement, Stonewood provides advisors with tools and training to work with clients on how to identify, quantify, and address tax risk through “new holistic” income planning.
Brock Jolly, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CASL, CFBS, RICP, CEPA – Founder of The College Funding Coach® – a complete game plan for building a differentiated and top-producing financial advising practice by helping families make the college dream a reality and consider college funding strategies as part of a comprehensive financial plan.
David Wood, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer, Gateway Financial Partners – presented on the critical strategies and insights needed to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of financial mergers and acquisitions (M&A) along with valuable knowledge about the latest trends, effective negotiation tactics, and essential steps to prepare financial businesses for acquisition or purchase other practices.
Mike McGlothlin, VP Retirement, Ash Brokerage – an insurance IMO that assists financial professionals of all kinds – from independent agents to national broker-dealers, financial planners, RIAs, CPAs, and everyone in between – in working with them and their clients for insurance solutions that protect and provide income for retirement, longevity, estate planning, or life’s unexpected events.
Peter Hershon, CLU, ChFC, SVP, Account Services at Coventry – presented on the trends that are driving the secondary insurance market’s continued growth and provides an overview of the five most common applications being used by advisors today.
John McGinty, VP Sales, LifeRoc Capital – a direct life settlement provider and a trusted partner that collaborates with the nation’s top financial institutions, independent trust firms, financial planners, attorneys, and CPAs to help them navigate the complicated world of life settlements.
Stuart Little, Director of Sales, Abacus Life – a leading global alternative asset manager and market maker that specializes in using advanced longevity and actuarial technology to purchase life insurance policies from consumers seeking liquidity.
Nicole Hill, Senior Director, Wealth Consultant, American Cancer Society – specifically works with financial professionals as a philanthropic partner with their clients.
Tony Bouquet, VP Business Development, The American College of Financial Services – leading academic institution for applied financial knowledge and education with the best ROI for professionals and organizations looking to grow in financial knowledge, community, and collective purpose.
Final Thoughts
As the Dean of the financial services-focused Institute for Innovation Development, I have always strongly believed in strategic thinking, innovation creation, and strategic partnership management as the nexus of business forces needed to address an operating environment challenged by an accelerating and compounding rate of change.
It was exhilarating to witness how NAIFA was exhibiting these innovation and growth-oriented approaches and mindsets by strategically building, accumulating, combining, and aligning a wide range of specialized resources to support their membership value proposition in terms of advocacy, education, collaboration, and differentiation to better serve customers.
I purposely highlighted a cross-section of the Conference speakers and strategic vendor partners to illustrate the careful, forward-looking selection of topics and resources chosen to support industry evolution towards holistic financial planning, technology embracement, business model innovation, mindset training, and the power of collaboration and strategic partnering in this changing financial services business environment.
NAIFA as an organization has positioned itself to shape the future of the industry while empowering financial service professionals and enhancing the financial security of consumers in communities across the nation.
This article was originally published here and is republished on Wealthtender with permission.
About the Author
Bill Hortz
Founder Institute for Innovation Development
Bill Hortz is an independent business consultant and Founder/Dean of the Institute for Innovation Development- a financial services business innovation platform and network. With over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry including expertise in sales/marketing/branding of asset management firms, as well as, creatively restructuring and developing internal/external sales and strategic account departments for 5 major financial firms, including OppenheimerFunds, Neuberger&Berman and Templeton Funds Distributors. His wide ranging experiences have led Bill to a strong belief, passion and advocation for strategic thinking, innovation creation and strategic account management as the nexus of business skills needed to address a business environment challenged by an accelerating rate of change.
