LIMRA was once the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association, and speakers at its latest annual conference want to find ways to heal the world with life insurance, marketing and research.
LIMRA started the three-day event Sunday in National Harbor, Maryland. The speakers on the podium talked about the conflicts facing the United States and the world.
Ron Insana, a CNBC contributor and Dynasty Financial Partners' chief market strategist, shook his head at the U.S. House of Representatives' difficulties with picking a new speaker. "If you don't have a speaker by the middle of November, there's a shutdown," he said. "This is going to be a tougher environment."
Other speakers worried about poverty, income inequality, and the many family breadwinners around the world who lack life insurance.
Gordon Watson, chairman of AXA's Asia business, pointed out that the eight largest world economies are on track to have a $480 trillion retirement savings shortfall by 2050.
What it means: The world needs you.
Amy Friedrich, a Principal Financial executive who served as the moderator for the morning general session Tuesday, said the people at the LIMRA conference, and financial services marketers in general, are in the right place to make a difference.
"We sit at the center of financial literacy," Friedrich said.
She suggested that many of the problems the speakers described would be much smaller and easier to solve if more people understood personal finance and took simple steps to save money and protect themselves with insurance.
"That's our job," Friedrich said.
The U.S. market: U.S. life insurers are hoping that modernizing their information technology systems will help increase their efficiency and reach, and the LIMRA conference exhibitor's list was full of insurtech vendors like Ebix Exchange, Equisoft, Hexure, iPipeline and Majesco.
