The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors says it will be responding to declining membership by trying to create more customer value.
The board of NAIFA, Falls Church, Va., hired an outside research firm to study the views of NAIFA members, recently lapsed members and potential members.
"What emerged was a picture of an industry that has changed dramatically over the past 20-30 years and of an organization (NAIFA) that has not kept pace with that change," NAIFA officials write in a summary of the research firm's findings.
NAIFA was founded in 1890 as the National Association of Life Underwriters.
Although NAIFA still has 800 state and local associations, a formidable lobbying organization and more than 225,000 members, membership has dropped by more than half over the last 14 years, and the average age of the remaining members is over 50, officials write.
"NAIFA is increasingly viewed as an irrelevant and archaic organization for a limited segment of the industry," officials warn.
