Broker World

LifeSecure Insurance Company has named Brian Vestergaard as vice president of sales and marketing. This is an expansion of Vestergaard's previous position, in which he served as the company's vice president of product and marketing. He will now lead LifeSecure's sales, product, and marketing areas.

"Brian's vision and leadership have been pivotal pieces in LifeSecure's success and I'm pleased to have him take on this new role," said Tiffany Albert, LifeSecure president and CEO. "His experience and expertise will allow us to align our sales strategies with our growing, innovative product portfolio and strengthen our position as an industry leader."

As vice president of product and marketing, Vestergaard has been instrumental in the design of LifeSecure's trademark simple, yet flexible products, while also overseeing brand development and marketing. He will now also focus on directing LifeSecure's sales strategies in order to continue the company's national growth and expansion into new markets. 

Vestergaard joined LifeSecure when it was founded in 2006. With nearly 20 years of experience in the long term care and ancillary insurance industry, he previously held leadership positions with multiple national insurance carriers. He earned two bachelor's degrees from Purdue University and a Master of International Management degree from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, AZ.

"I'm looking forward to taking on my new responsibilities and joining LifeSecure's best-in-class sales team," Vestergaard said. "We have a shared focus of leading LifeSecure into its next chapter of growth and this is a wonderful opportunity to drive the company's continued success."

LifeSecure Insurance Company is dedicated to its mission of delivering an exceptional insurance experience. The company offers long term care and other supplemental health insurance products. LifeSecure is licensed in 46 states and the District of Columbia. Additional information is available at www.YourLifeSecure.com. 

The “Share Your Golf Memory” social media campaign came to a close Feb. 7 with golf fans making new memories and sharing them on social media using #AllianzBirdies during the Allianz Championship in Boca Raton, FL. In honor of the campaign, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz Life®) and Allianz Global Investors donated $50,000 to the Alzheimer’s Association, Southeast Florida Chapter. The campaign ran Feb. 1-7 during the Allianz Championship week, helping raise awareness for the Alzheimer’s Association’s mission to end Alzheimer’s disease.

“Memories are made at golf tournaments, and we are pleased to leverage the Allianz Championship to raise awareness of the great work the Alzheimer’s Association is doing to promote brain health and help those affected by the disease,” said Allianz Life Chief Marketing Officer Nancy Jones. “By creating and sharing memories via social media, tournament attendees were able to support the mission of the Alzheimer’s Association in their own way and build community understanding and involvement.”

The social media campaign highlighted golf memories old and new from attendees enjoying the Championship and fans around the country. Allianz Life and Allianz Global Investors made the donation to help support individuals, family members, caregivers and others impacted by the disease.

“Allianz’s focus on putting their customers at the heart of everything they do is illustrated in their dedication to help the Alzheimer’s Association achieve our mission to end Alzheimer’s disease,” said Ann May, CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association, Southeast Florida Chapter. “The money raised at the Allianz Championship for our local chapter will go to help fund national research as well as our local services and programs.”

Allianz Life has a long history of supporting the Alzheimer’s Association. For nearly 10 years, Allianz Life has raised more than $915,000 for the Alzheimer’s Association MN-ND through their annual Driving to Donate Charity Golf Tournament. Recognizing the results, the Driving to Donate Tournament recently ranked 11th on the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal’s 2015 Top Charity Golf Tournaments List.

Allianz has been providing financial services through its affiliates in the United States since 1896.  World-class expertise across a wide range of financial services, from active asset management to innovative solutions to help grow and protect income in retirement. As a leading global financial services company with more than 147,000 employees in 70 countries, Allianz makes a difference in the lives of more than 85 million clients worldwide each day. For more information about Allianz companies in the United States, visit www.allianzusa.com.

Dr. Michael Finke, a nationally renowned educator and researcher in the financial advising profession, has been named dean and chief academic officer at The American College of Financial Services.

Dr. Finke, a professor and director of retirement planning and living in the Department of Personal Financial Planning at Texas Tech University, will assume his new duties this summer. He brings to The College more than a decade of experience in academic leadership, and a national reputation as one of the foremost thought leaders in his field.

“What Dr. Finke offers – a commitment to world-class research and innovative ideas that solve practical problems in the financial planning profession – will be transformative for The American College,” said President and CEO, Dr. Robert Johnson. “Whether he’s working with companies to explore the best way to use financial products, speaking with professionals about developing better ways to provide value to clients, or coming up with new and better ways to explain concepts to students, Dr. Finke’s primary goal has been to operate at the intersection of practice and academia, helping make financial planning a true profession.”

Among the most prolific authors in financial planning journals, Dr. Finke has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles since joining the Texas Tech faculty. He has also been widely quoted in many of the nation’s leading consumer publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, and Money Magazine.

His research questioning the four percent rule in the Journal of Financial Planning with The American College professor Dr. Wade Pfau won the 2014 Montgomery Warschauer Award for the most influential article.  Dr. Finke was also recently selected to present his research on financial literacy and aging at the 2015 MIT Center for Finance and Policy conference.

Dr. Finke said what he admires most about The American College is its dedication to providing knowledge that advances financial services as a profession.

“I take the vision of influencing the profession and general public for the common good seriously as the driving principle of the institution,” he said. “Contributing to the knowledge base and best practices of advisors has been my goal as a professional, and I look forward to continuing to serve in this role at The American College.”

He also said he looks forward to working with The College’s excellent team of faculty members and researchers he has come to know very well.

“I’ll have the ability to work with a faculty that I deeply respect to help meet the educational needs of financial services professionals in a marketplace that places an increasing value on knowledge,” he said.

In addition to conducting research and advising students, Dr. Finke writes the monthly “Finke on Finance” column for Research Magazine in which he uses research to help professionals understand timely industry topics.  He has also worked on white paper research projects for a number of companies and the Society of Actuaries.

“One of the most rewarding parts of my job as an academician is my ability to work with the many professionals in this industry who are dedicated to creating better products and processes, and to help bridge the communities of academics and financial advisors.”

Dr. Finke received a doctorate in consumer economics from The Ohio State University in 1998 and in finance from the University of Missouri in 2011. He also served as the director of graduate studies at the University of Missouri. Since 2006, Dr. Finke has directed the Ph.D. program at the Texas Tech University Department of Personal Financial Planning.

The American College of Financial Services is the nation’s largest non-profit educational institution devoted to financial services. Holding the highest level of academic accreditation, The College has served as a valued business partner to banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies and others since 1927. The American College faculty represents some of the financial services profession’s foremost thought leaders. For more information visit TheAmericanCollege.edu.

PaperClip, Inc., a leading provider of email encryption solutions, today announced that it has been identified as a Representative Vendor in the Gartner “Market Guide for Email Encryption” report published December 7, 2015.  PaperClip was named as one of the vendors that specialize in dedicated products and services for email encryption and products that address other email security and management issues.

According to Gartner, “Major growth in digital business transactions, regulatory requirements and privacy concerns have invigorated the email encryption market. Risk and security leaders should identify and evaluate email encryption products that best fit their organizations’ business drivers, use cases and requirements.”

Email 4 Compliance (eM4) is a unique B2B and B2C service securing email traffic with little to no user interaction.  The service feature of Disinterested Third Party (D3P) Auditing allows for “Chain of Custody” tracking documenting the secure life of the email across the internet.  eM4 delivers the features required to meet federal, state and local rules and regulations required to conduct binding business via email.

“Our sole focus for twenty four years has been on working closely with our customers to develop products and services that enable the paperless experience as the community adopts change,” said Mike Bridges, president of PaperClip, Inc. “We believe being named by Gartner as a Representative Vendor reinforces our solution’s value to our customers.”

PaperClip Software, Inc. develops and markets software products and services that organize and manage documents, images, workflow and communications. For more information visit: www.paperclip.com.

WebCE, a market leader for e-learning solutions in the financial services industry, announced today the acquisition of InsuranceCE.com, a highly regarded online continuing education provider for licensed insurance professionals.

“We are excited to expand our product offerings to the financial services industry by bringing InsuranceCE.com programs into the WebCE fold,” said Jennifer Haworth, WebCE’s president. “InsuranceCE.com has a loyal customer following, and we look forward to building a trusted relationship with them.”

“When I decided to sell InsuranceCE.com, I looked for a company that focused on customer service and quality content,” said Angela Lingle, InsuranceCE.com’s owner. “WebCE is without a doubt the most customer-focused online insurance CE company in the business.”

WebCE’s acquisition of InsuranceCE.com expands their product offerings and provides the growing insurance market with a comprehensive catalog of quality education courses and training. InsuranceCE.com customers will benefit from a broader course curriculum, both online and paper-based, and WebCE’s responsive customer services, including online printable certificates, live customer support and expedited reporting services.

WebCE is the largest provider of online continuing education, training, and custom course delivery programs for insurance and financial planning professionals. Each year they deliver over 900,000 high-quality education courses at an affordable price. Insurance CE courses and testing services are available either online or through traditional books. More information is available on the company’s website, www.webce.com.

PaperClip Incorporated, a leading provider of mission-critical communications and document management services for businesses and government organizations announces Mojo, bringing together the magic of the Cloud and Crowd Sourcing.  Mojo brings unprecedented performance with unmatched accuracy providing never seen before service levels.  Cloud architecture offers an elastic virtual environment capable of scaling to any size needed at any time.  Mojo is Cloud born, exploiting its architecture and services to reach the growing crowd sourcing workforce.

BYOC, Bring Your Own Crowd, provides flexibility in engaging billions of people to perform what they do best, transcription, translation and interpretive answers to Big Data.  One of many innovations Mojo delivers is the level of compliance for the most sensitive processes.  Non Public Information is processed more securely than ever before with many safeguards ensuring privacy.

“Mojo as a platform is designed to consume Big Data and produce usable data,” explains Mike Bridges, president of PaperClip Incorporated.  “The ability to process thousands of forms or hours of audio within seconds with 99.9 percent accuracy is now a reality,” Bridges continued.

Mojo is being targeted at paper based form intense applications where users need to process into usable data.  Mojo’s unique process embraces confidential information by removing context and even slicing sensitive values into SnipIts whereby the crowd source workflow never receives the entire value. 

Mojo supports two types of crowd sourcing: Enterprise and Commercial.  Enterprise is designed for organizations that staff their own data entry workforce.  Commercial is designed with a gaming effect for freelance workers.  These people will receive feedback on the effort, participate in competitions and have the ability to cash out at any time to a supported electronic payment processor.

“Mojo fits well into today’s processing because there is no adoption or training challenge,” remarked Suzy Tuck, vice president of sales for PaperClip Incorporated.  “Our customers can now obtain the Big Data that in the past was cost prohibitive,” she continued. 

Mojo maintains its data in the Shredded Data Storage (SDS).  This model, unlike its relational SQL counterpart, has no contexts and requires the Mojo service to reconstruct for relational use.  The database by itself has no value; Mojo maintains its data “Shredded at Rest”.

Mojo is where Big Data begins; the ability to take images, audio and video and process into thousands of small SnipIts pushed out to thousands of Clippers returning usable data in seconds.  In effect, users can now take advantage of offshore economics without the offshore experience.

PaperClip Software, Inc. develops and markets software products and services that organize and manage documents, images, workflow and communications. The company’s customers include individual Internet users, corporations using enterprise-wide systems and others. The company distributes its products worldwide through distributors, value-added resellers, systems integrators, retail stores and direct channels.  For more information visit www.paperclip.com.

American National Insurance Company (American National) announced a new product, Signature Plus Indexed Universal Life Insurance (IUL), available January 1, 2016. This innovative life insurance product offers death benefit protection, four indexed crediting strategies and a fixed account as well as an interest rate enhancement.

Signature Plus IUL can provide the opportunity to earn interest based upon the performance of the S&P 500® Index without the client being directly invested in the index.  Therefore, the accumulation value will never decrease based on the fluctuations of the S&P 500® Index as all four of the indexed interest crediting strategies have a built-in floor.  One of the indexed strategies currently has a declared floor of 1.5 percent so that strategy can earn interest even in the event of a decrease in the index.*  Another indexed crediting strategy provides an uncapped strategy with an interest rate spread for greater crediting potential in rising markets.

Signature Plus IUL may enhance returns for loyal customers beginning in the 11th year.  An interest rate enhancement up to one percent may begin in year 11 and could continue for the life of the policy.  This may increase the rate credited to the sweep account, fixed account and maturing indexed interest crediting strategies by one percent which may lead to growth of long term accumulation values.  Signature Plus IUL can provide clients the life insurance protection their families need with the opportunity to increase accumulation value for future emergencies, college education or supplemental retirement income.  It also offers accelerated benefits for critical, chronic and terminal illness.  The Signature Plus IUL has multiple uses while providing family protection.

David A. Behrens, executive vice president of American National said, “American National’s new Signature Plus IUL builds upon the tested concepts of our previous indexed products to create a competitive second generation IUL with more options for clients with the addition of the uncapped strategy and the year 11 interest rate enhancement.  Signature Plus IUL allows a client to have control over the placement of their premium in the various indexed strategies or a fixed account while protecting their family’s future.”

American National Insurance Company, headquartered in Galveston, Texas, was founded in 1905 and is licensed to conduct the business of insurance in all states except New York. American National offers a broad line of products and services, which include life insurance, annuities, health insurance, credit insurance and pension products. 

For more information, including company news and investor relations information, visit American National’s website at www.americannational.com.

*The accumulation value may decrease due to the monthly deduction regardless of the interest rate credited for any particular strategy.

AmFirst Insurance Company, an Oklahoma domiciled insurance company with administrative offices located in Jackson, Mississippi has announced its acquisition of 100 percent of the common stock of TPM Life Insurance Company of Lancaster, PA. TPM Life Insurance Company is the successor stock company resulting from the demutualization of Teachers Protective Mutual Life Insurance Company by order of the Pennsylvania Insurance Department effective December 30, 2015. Teachers Protective Mutual has been in business since 1912.

On December 29, 2015, Teachers Protective Mutual entered into a 100% coinsurance agreement with Senior Health Insurance Company of Pennsylvania (SHIP) in which SHIP assumed 100% of Teachers’ long-term care business. 

AmFirst, and its other affiliates, write various supplemental health and dental products in the employer and association group market in 31 states and the British Virgin Islands. The acquisition of TPM Life will provide three additional states in which these products can be filed and offered. 

AmFirst President David White said, “We are delighted that we will be able to expand our product line to brokers who have long requested availability of our products in other states.”

For more information about AmFirst Insurance Company, visit www.amfirstinsco.com.

ExamOne, a Quest Diagnostics Company, and the nation’s leading provider of paramedical information services, announced that it has completed the previously announced acquisition of Superior Mobile Medics.

 As a result of the transaction, life insurers and applicants now have access to the most extensive range of innovative services, national network of examiners and in-center locations in the industry.

 “We are excited to welcome Superior Mobile Medics to the ExamOne team,” said Troy Hartman, president, ExamOne. “The business model Superior provides to brokerages, carriers, wellness clients and their collection network partners is complementary to ExamOne’s model and we intend to leverage the best of both approaches as we combine our operations.”

 The acquisition supports ExamOne’s commitment to superior service as well as ExamOne’s strategy of improving applicant experience, reducing cycle time and facilitating precision within the life insurance industry.

Legal & General America’s Charitable Giving Campaign was held in the fourth quarter of 2015 with two weeks of fundraising events and donations from local businesses. The 2015 featured charities include Jacob’s Ride, Unsung K9 Heroes Project and Movember.

Jacob’s Ride raises funds and public awareness about the benefits of cochlear implants for the deaf. Unsung K9 Heroes Project’s mission is to benefit day-to-day operations for K9 divisions in the Frederick, MD, area. Movember is a global organization committed to men’s health with a focus on funding for prostate cancer, testicular cancer and mental health issues.

LGA employees, with help from the community, raised approximately $370,000, exceeding the $300,000 goal. Employees pledge to the charity of their choice, while in-house fundraising events benefit the featured charities. $55,000 in donations was divided between Jacob’s Ride, Unsung K9 Heroes Project and Movember. Legal & General America matched the amount raised, so in total $740,000 was raised, aiding hundreds of different charities.

Jacob Landis, founder of Jacob’s Ride, said, “I cannot thank you and your organization enough for what this means for Jacob’s Ride, the Gift of Hearing Foundation, and most importantly, the (at least) two individuals who will be receiving an implant. This is an amazing sum. There are hardly any appropriate words for how this news makes me feel; I am tremendously grateful and also elated.”