Remember the 1996 film "Multiplicity," where Michael Keaton's character never has enough time in the day and finds a sort-of solution by cloning himself?
I'd like to have three clones with me at this week's 2013 LIMRA Life Insurance Conference in New Orleans. That way I, or at least a representative of me, could be in four places at once, and I wouldn't miss all the concurrent sessions I would like to attend. Heck, while I'm at it, I may as well add a fourth clone who can just wander around Bourbon Street and sample Cajun cuisine and catch some live jazz.
A conference with too many great choices is a good problem to have, but lacking clones, it forces you to prioritize and focus in on key subjects that you think will provide the most benefit. Therefore, I've decided to go into this conference with a focus on learning all I can about indexed universal life.
As life insurance producers know, IUL is hot. According to LIMRA, it has brought in the most additional new life insurance premium over the past few years and is one of only two products able to increase its sales each year of the recent recession. Individual life insurance premium sales had a strong finish in 2012. Thanks in large part to IUL, a 12 percent increase in the fourth quarter of the year bumped sales growth by 6 percent compared with 2011. The upcoming July issue of Life Insurance Selling will be taking a closer look at indexed products, which is another reason I'm anxious to find out all I can.
In advance of this week's conference in New Orleans, LIMRA released a podcast interview with Carolyn M. Johnson, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Protective Life and president of West Coast Life Insurance Company. Johnson will be providing an executive outlook on the life insurance industry during the conference's opening general session on Tuesday morning. In the LIMRA podcast, she talked about the rising popularity of IUL.
