Indexed Products Association Changes Its Name And Focus
By
Henderson, Nev.
The National Association for Indexed Products voted at its annual meeting here to change its name and broaden its focus. The new name is the National Association for Fixed Annuities, and its acronym will now be NAFA, says Joan Boros, the associations vice chairman.
Further, the NAFA name will now carry a tag line indicating the organizations broader purview. This tagline says NAFA is "The Association for Traditional Fixed and Indexed Products."
In a related move, the association voted to allow individual agents and other distributors to become "associate members" of the organization, for annual dues of $200.
Originally, the six-year-old trade group focused on "preserving, protecting and defending" indexed products, especially indexed annuities, she points out. But the association now wants to expand its mission to include all fixed annuity products, not just fixed indexed contracts. Life products are not excluded from NAFAs purview, but they are not the central focus.
This reflects the growing national interest in fixed annuity products in recent years, Boros indicates. Further, NAFA wants to signal that it represents the interests of fixed index insurance products, not registered index products and not securities containing index features.
This does not mean that NAFA is abandoning the associations original mission, Boros stresses. Rather, she says, "we want to broaden our mission."
The move to include producers within the membership is another part of the broadening effort, she indicates. This should "help our member companies with educating, promoting and backing up" the efforts of producers who sell traditional fixed and indexed insurance products, she says.
