New Leaders At NAIFA, ACLI Should Cheer The Industry

On the agent side, the ascension of David Woods to the CEO post of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors should be greeted with rejoicing. For too long, NAIFA has been in serious disarray. This has come about primarily as a result of having no effective plan to deal with a years-long hemorrhaging that has halved the groups membership.

With Woods at the helm, NAIFA will have someone who was not only a master agent but has proved himself an excellent executive as well. As head of the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education, Woods has done a superb job of fund raising for LIFEs educational mission and has kept the group on message.

His mandate–raising NAIFAs membership to 100,000 by 2005 from its present 73,000–is almost breathtakingly ambitious. But Woods dedication to NAIFA is so deep–he was its president for the 1986-87 term after all–that we can already feel the turnaround beginning.

Both of these gentlemen–Keating and Woods–inspire confidence. Considering the challenges ahead, the industry is lucky to be starting 2003 with them as its chief spokesmen.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, December 30, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.