Life Happens President: Millennials Evaluate Advisers by Their Online Presence
October 16, 2018 by Frank Klimko
WASHINGTON – Marv Feldman, president and chief executive officer, Life Happens, said financial advisers need to maintain their social media and other online business presences or risk losing the trust of the next generation of insurance buyers. Feldman spoke with A.M. BestTV at the annual conference of the American Council of Life Insurers, held in Washington.
View the video version of this interview at: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=feldman1018
Following is an edited transcript of the interview.
Q: Life Happens is a nonprofit organization formed in 1994 by seven leading insurance-producing organizations. Why was it formed?
A: If you remember, back around 1994 there was a lot of turmoil in the industry. We had problems with dividend scales being reduced and vanishing premiums turned into vanishing policies. There were some policies that were being sold that were life insurance policies but were being marketed as private pensions. The press decided that it was fair game to take the insurance industry apart. The problem was that the agents and advisers were seeing what was happening and seeing that the companies were throwing everybody under the bus.
They were afraid to take affirmative action against the press. The agents got together, went to the companies, and said, “We want to do something from the agent’s side.” They went to some companies in New York for public relations and advertising. Said, “How much of a budget do we need?” Got the number. Went back to the companies. Put a consortium of companies together who funded the initial startup in 1994. We started with a $10 million budget per year, and ran, and tried to enhance the image of the agents and the advisers. That’s what we did. We solved that issue and solved that problem. 25 years later, we’re still here, doing the things that need to be done for the industry and the consumer.
Q: Why is it so important to educate the public?
A: The public understands what our products are. You say life insurance or long-term care disability, they know what they are. They don’t necessarily understand what they do. Our job is to educate them about what our products are, what they do, and then motivate them to take action to actually incorporate those in their overall financial planning.
Q: How does long-term care insurance make a difference in people’s lives?
A: It’s a great thing. There’s so many people that have had financial issues and problems because they’ve drained all of their resources or families have drained all their resources to care for loved ones. We try to make sure that they understand that there are alternatives that can be utilized where they don’t have to drain those resources. Long-term care is a fantastic resource for that, whether it’s a stand-alone or a hybrid-type of contract.
Q: You jointly published a report in April that showed a strong social media presence was critical for the success of life insurance agents and advisers. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
A: We do some joint research with LIMRA every year. It’s called our barometer study. We started to incorporate more and more information about social media and using the internet to educate consumers about who we are and what we do as advisers and as life insurance agents. What we found is that that’s becoming more of a concern to the consumers than it was in previous years, especially with millennials.
Millennials, if they’re approached by a financial adviser, the first thing they do is they go online to see what type of social media presence you have and what your website is. What they said was, if you don’t have that presence, they won’t work with you. It’s really important to have that. What we try to do through Life Happens is to make sure you have the social media resources to populate your Facebook and your LinkedIn and all the other things that you need, as long as your compliance officers approve it.
View this and other interviews at http://www.ambest.tv
(By Frank Klimko, Washington correspondent, BestWeek: Frank.Klimko@ambest.com)
BN-NJ-10-15-2018 1102 ET #
