Need New Producers? Consider Some Unconventional Channels

Also fueling the shift to independent distribution was the growth of disciplines within the financial services sector–financial planning, wealth management, pension consulting and investment advisory services–whose professionals include life products in their portfolio mix. Many of these specialists built their careers outside the life insurance field; and, to a large degree, they view their independence of the carriers as essential to upholding their fiduciary responsibility to clients.

The Path Ahead

To expand their ranks, forward-looking BGAs are implementing training programs tailored to agents who come to the life profession without prior experience. Many of these companies, Limra researchers note, are small outfits that field no more than 50 producers. The better funded ones get an assist from independent market organizations and carriers that can budget resources to basic sales training.

Still, these efforts are fragmentary, varying widely from one company to the next. And so the question arises: Is a more collaborative effort required, one organized by trade associations in concert with the indirect channel's players, to substantially enlarge the producer pool? Could, for example, the National Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies spearhead the development of an agent training program that the industry's BGAs and IMOs would fund and carry out?

I put these questions to Mark Rosen, the 2010 chairman of NAILBA, Fairfax, Va., and president of Underwriters Brokerage Service, Pittsburgh, Pa. His response: Such a nationwide initiative is unrealistic. NAILBA, he says, is not set up for this purpose. And he questions whether enough of the industry's players would participate in such an initiative to give it critical mass.

The more likely course of events, he and Limra experts say, is that BGAs will boost their ranks by recruiting more aggressively and creatively among the aforementioned professionals and others whose expertise is frequently required in advanced planning, including CPAs, estate planning attorneys and P&C agents. Because many of these advisors already have extensive sales and business management experience, the level of training and support required to get them up to speed on life products is qualitatively different from that needed by new career agents working for the carriers.

And so the channel of independent producers will comprise an increasingly eclectic mix of advisors who bring broad expertise and skills to the life insurance space. That's all to the good, for in meeting their recruitment objectives, BGAs will also be enhancing an already outdated image of the life insurance professional.