Stephen Howard

I must begin by expressing my extreme gratitude to friend Claude Thau, Target Insurance Services and Thau, Inc., and the wonderful folks at Milliman, Inc., Dawn Helwig, Allen Schmitz and especially Taylor Schmidt (who caught enough of my editing errors that I’m convinced she could pick fly “sign” out of pepper!), for their fantastic work collecting, organizing and analyzing the information for the 2016 Long Term Care Insurance Survey featured in this issue.  This marks the 18th year that Broker World has been thus blessed to provide our readers with the industry’s most comprehensive LTCI product comparison along with the valuable insight of these peerless industry experts.  Further, in the August issue Broker World will again provide an analysis of work-site sales, and in the September issue we intend to publish a brief survey regarding combo life and LTCI policies which offer extension of benefits features (LTCI benefits can continue after the death benefit is exhausted).  Great organizations are the result of great work by great people, and Claude, Dawn, Allen and Taylor certainly bear that out.  Thank you![SPH]

One of the greatest blessings we owe to this industry are the wonderful friends we make on our journey, but inevitably it brings us sorrow as well.  It is my sad duty to here recognize the passing of good friend Martin “Marty” Rochkind, Insurance Marketing Center, Rockville, MD.   

 Marty began his career more than 40 years ago as an insurance agent for Metropolitan Life and later as an independent broker marketing employee benefits to small and medium-sized businesses. From 1967 to 1986, he qualified for the Million Dollar Round Table and was a Charter Member of the Court of the Table.  As a successful broker, Marty recognized a need in the marketplace to provide resources and personalized service to brokers and agents.  As a result, he formed Insurance Marketing Center (IMC) in 1986, and grew the business into the largest independently owned employee benefits brokerage in the DC area. 

Marty was widely known in the industry for his marketing expertise and dedication to quality service.  He was a gifted marketer of innovative concepts and niche products such as consumer driven plans, retiree health plans, international medical plans and limited medical plans.  His career included serving as president of Leaders Club of Washington and of the National Association of Insurance Marketers (NAIM), a major national brokerage general agent marketing group. 

Marty developed, produced, and directed numerous IMC health brokerage fairs, single-day marketing and sales extravaganzas attended by hundreds of brokers annually. He was the first moderator of the Group Insurance Program sponsored by the Life Underwriter Training Council (LUTC).  He wrote a workshop called “101 Group Insurance” for agents, brokers, and staff who need to understand health insurance and how it works.

I met Marty through my work with NAIM and found him to be a passionate advocate for the industry, for brokers (and for his own point of view!).  He had a passion also for baseball, and for collectibles—in particular framed photos of ballparks, old and new.  I couldn’t believe how much he glowed and crowed when I sent him a photo of Kansas City’s stadium, one he was missing.  I recently visited KC’s Negro Leagues Museum and I can’t help but think how much Marty would have loved it.

Marty Rochkind held his friends dear and made sure they always felt it—and I’m damn lucky to have been one of them. [SPH]

June’s column inexorably draws from me a miasma of righteous (and coincidentally right-leaning) indignation, paranoia (overwhelmingly justified?), impotent anger and a sense of impending doom.  Coupled with my seemingly unquenchable cynicism toward our government’s ability to affect efficient, well supervised, fair and affordable solutions to any problem, particularly those emotionally charged and/or particularly beneficial to either political party’s constituency, I’m extremely challenged to provide even a “fair and balanced” dissertation on the glaring flaws and unforgivable encroachments on individual and states’ rights of the “Affordable” Care Act (ACA).  It is apparent to me that the advisors of our elected officials have either been snickering at us for decades behind their hands or skipped school to smoke dope on the days that their English teachers discussed oxymorons.

In an effort to taint my diatribe with an inconvenient fact, the efforts of elected officials on both the state and federal level have, through their actions, negatively affected my company’s profitability—there are simply fewer health insurers, and coincidentally poignantly fewer who choose—or for whom it makes sense to choose—to advertise in Broker World.  Diagnose that condition as the result of restrictions to profitability that cause either carriers’ exit from the market altogether, or receding from disadvantageous areas thus limiting their territory and our pricing’s appeal.  I am certainly not an impartial observer.

And neither are you.  The effect on the market and on producers and their ability to serve consumers has obviously been much more significant.  The ripple effect on businesses trying to juggle benefits dollars is unavoidable and can affect all facets of insurance product distribution—from boardrooms, accountants’ offices and registered rep lunches to cafeterias, golf courses and family kitchen tables.  There is, for almost all of us unelected, only so much money.

Although I can’t even fathom how profitable it would have been to be a vendor selected to publish the actual volume containing the Act—a volume so thick no responsible parent would even consider using it as a booster seat—I would rather beat myself in the head with a meat tenderizer than have to edit and proofread it.  I vacillate between pity, deep admiration and an urge to institutionalize anyone who has actually read and studied it.  I’m firmly convinced none of our elected officials fall into this category.

Fortunately some tortured souls have spent (I imagine) immense amounts of time studying the ACA and I stumbled across several well thought out online articles while searching for my muse.  One in particular was from The Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/04/year-six-of-the-affordable-care-act-obamacares-mounting-problems).  In the article by Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., senior fellow, Center for Health Policy Studies, the author outlines a great number of the problems with the ACA that have become apparent in year six.  I found it an engaging read, though too in depth for me to do even passing justice to it here.  But within the article Moffit relays the “Top 10 Reasons Why the ACA’s Future is Uncertain,” and I’ll list them here.  The author expands on each of them extensively within his thought-provoking piece.

Moffit’s Top Ten:

Reason #1: Despite the President’s repeated promises, rising insurance costs continue to burden businesses and families.

Reason #2: The ACA generates big and surprising out-of-pocket costs.

Reason #3: The ACA has reduced insurance competition.

Reason #4: The ACA has a negative impact on job growth.

Reason #5: The overall health care cost curve is “bending” upward.

Reason #6: The ACA is imposing major tax increases on America’s middle class.

Reason #7: Medicare payment cuts will threaten seniors’ future access to care.

Reason #8: The ACA threatens increased deficits and debt.

Reason #9: The ACA forces Americans, in direct violation of their rights of conscience, to fund abortion through their tax dollars.

Reason #10: The ACA imposes arbitrary rules and costly mandates.

Each of these findings is in direct conflict with the assertions made to promote and support this panacea shoved down American’s throats by—to put it mildly—an act of legislative ignorance and subterfuge.  Adding insult to injury, in 2013 the Obama Administration provided special taxpayer subsidies for Members of Congress and staff to offset their higher insurance costs in the ACA health insurance exchange.

I encourage you to read the lead editorial in this issue for a greatly insightful review of the flaws of the ACA from an industry perspective, written by Art Jetter, president of Art Jetter & Associates, Omaha, NE, a much brighter bulb than I and, I suspect, one of the tortured souls alluded to previously.  God bless him! [SPH]

Just what we needed.  The Department of Labor has released its final fiduciary rule—a 1023 page document seen by many (or at least me) as a great boon to significant segments of the U. S. population: attorneys, the IRS and insomniacs.  One might further the analysis by suggesting that the rule, like social programs without judicious oversight and the voting bloc of the left, will create an inevitable increase in at least the third category of constituents—that bounty being you, the now-sleepless-in-Scranton insurance agent.

To put it mildly I haven’t the brain power of even the least accomplished actuary (although three people in my acquaintance suggest I may have a better sense of humor), but I am “gifted” with a chronic, seemingly irreversible, morbid cynicism regarding the liberalization of the American judicial system.  Most poignantly involving rulings that emasculate the concept of personal responsibility and transfer huge sums of money, on a contingency basis, from the pockets of defendants who “can afford it” to the Brooks Brothers pockets of ambulance chasers and, often tragically fleetingly, to the leatherette wallets of individuals (or their dependents) who were, in a sane society, quite likely destined to become uncompensated casualties of Darwinism.  It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that McDonald’s coffee is hot or that one shouldn’t touch a metal extension pole to an overhead line regardless of how many languages are represented on the warning label.

When these characters get their hands on “reasonable compensation”, “prohibited transaction”, “sole interest of the client”, and “best interest of the client”, I can’t help but envision a teeming hoard of “best plaintiffs’ law firms” descending like apocalyptic locusts on ignorantly sympathetic courts with proof in hand that an insurance company and bait shop in Idaho offered an annuity that would have garnered the consumer the windfall of another fifteen dollars a month in retirement income.  The words “punitive damages” do not fill me with greed-infused glee.  With the issuing carrier, perhaps reinsurer, the marketing group, the BGA or IMO, the writing agent, the consultants involved in product design, the printing companies who supplied the applications, the company who produced the signing pen and the Starbucks where the contract was signed all named as defendants, the mind quakes at the costs of doing business in, around or even innocently catering to the insurance industry.  Forget the premiums for E&O coverage (if it is even still available)…think what your fair trade caramel latte will cost!

But perhaps I digress…

Clearly the Department of Labor has either willfully ignored or sadly overlooked the potential harm that this rule could bring to both the insurance industry and the consumers they serve.  We are an industry already suffering from a dearth of new talent, artificially suppressed interest rates and a mainstream media seemingly diabolically fixated on corroding the public’s faith in institutions—designed and passionately driven to provide security in retirement for clients and comfort to families in time of tragedy—by gluttonously seizing on a comparatively few miscreants (or erroneously analyzing perfectly sound transactions) and lashing the uninformed into a frenzy of ”righteous” indignation and/or ignorant outrage.

Should the DOL final fiduciary rule stand as is, it’s difficult if not impossible to see an overall benefit to consumers for myriad reasons, many of which are beyond both my grasp and the space here allowed.  But the limitations placed on producers, the disclosure requirements, the perhaps unintended confusion and suspicion that could arise in prospects during the sales process, exemptions granted ERISA plans but not IRAs, the different treatment of fixed annuities versus fixed indexed annuities, and a host of other concerns will dramatically change the landscape if not amended.  An exodus of producers—reasoned, economically necessary or mandated—would create even less ability for consumers to obtain the sound advice many desperately need.

I urge you to get involved with your industry organizations and work on initiatives to modify the DOL rule to one even remotely reasonable for our industry and the consumers you serve.  Otherwise there may be more than a few of us asking: “Do you want whipped cream and drizzle on that?” [SPH]

It is my distinct pleasure to here recognize dear friend Ross Hopkin, The Brokerage Inc., Lewisville, TX, as the 2016 recipient of the Billy Vogel Award from The Marketing Alliance.  Announced recently at the marketing group’s spring meeting in San Antonio, TX, Hopkin was recognized as clearly meeting the award’s criteria of business acumen, sense of innovation, and above all integrity.  The award is named after and honors the late William E. “Billy” Vogel, the W.S. Vogel Agency, Livingston, NJ.

Shortly after receiving a degree in finance from the University of Houston in 1964, Hopkin began his insurance career as a group rep with General American.  After stints with Ranger and Blue Cross Blue Shield, he recognized the need to be able to offer the products of multiple companies and opened his own brokerage shop in 1976, with a typewriter, one group health insurance contract, and his wonderful wife Cheryl.

The agency grew to be a major force in the group and individual major medical market and added a life department in the late 1980’s and a long term care department in the 1990’s.  In 2001 he recast the agency with a focus on Medicare related products that would help the agency evolve into a national presence, capitalizing on opportunities presented in changing demographics and changing legislation.  Today, The Brokerage Inc. is a national marketing organization with 30 employees, many of them long term.

Hopkin has served on many insurance carrier and agency advisory boards, was one of the initial investors in The Marketing Alliance, and helped to build The Brokers Health Insurance Network and SubCenters.

I met Ross over 25 years ago as I was helping promote the fledgling Brokers Health Insurance Network. I find him to be a great friend, a savvy businessman and a great ambassador for our industry.  Congratulations Ross! [SPH]

April is the month to work up action plans for Disability Insurance Awareness Month, a campaign initiated annually by the Life Happens organization.  I encourage you to visit www.lifehappens.org as well as the Council for Disability Awareness,www.disabilitycanhappen.org, and the International DI Society, www.internationaldisociety.com, for a wealth of information and resources to help coordinate your efforts to serve your clients and prospects by helping them to protect the most important asset they possess—their income!  See page 71 in this issue for a further breakdown of some of the tools available from these great organizations enthusiastically serving our industry. [SPH]

In Memoriam

I am saddened to relay the passing of an extraordinary man and, although behind the scenes perhaps, certainly a building block of the brokerage business—Charles D. “Chuck” Rumbarger, the National Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies’ (NAILBA) first executive director,  passed away in January after a series of illnesses.

Shortly after leaving NALU (now NAIFA) in 1982, Rumbarger founded an association management firm (Association Management Group – AMG), and NAILBA was the first client of that firm—managed by AMG until becoming a self-managed association in 2002. Although Chuck had turned over the reins of NAILBA by that time, he remained involved and interested in NAILBA’s success.  His dedication to NAILBA for all those years resulted in his being named the 1999 Mooers Award recipient, an honor he highly prized but humbly accepted.

Shortly after receiving NAILBA’s (and the brokerage industry’s) highest honor, Rumbarger penned a letter delivered to this publication and addressed to NAILBA members and the brokerage industry.  In it, he said:  “Having recently sold my company and experienced several other life altering events, I have been reflecting on what things have really mattered over the 60 years I have been given.  Among those things has been the opportunity to associate with people like YOU.  People who have ‘hung in there,’continued to ‘show up’ and remained positive forces in organizations like NAILBA.  YOU are truly my heroes.  Your living of life, as ordinary or as flawed as you may think it has been, is an inspiration to me.  You have made organizations and lives better than you found them.  Thank you.”  That’s just a tiny example of the character of Chuck Rumbarger.

Current NAILBA CEO Jack Chiasson remembers his dear friend: “Once I got the job, Chuck was never more than a phone call or an email away, and never refused any of my requests for advice or counsel.  We met regularly for lunch, and he helped me to navigate the ins and outs of my first CEO position – board and volunteer relations, financial management and governance, strategic planning, staffing, legal issues, whatever – all the things that any association executive deals with on a day-to-day basis. I couldn’t have done it without him, and I will miss him terribly.”

Rumbarger served his country in the Air Force as an air policeman in the Philippines during the build-up of the Vietnam War and subsequently in Washington, DC, rising to the rank of Sergeant.

He often reached out to help others, such as anonymously buying dinner for a tired policeman or struggling family. He served in organizations which focused on the needs of underserved children, led boy scouts at a jamboree as a young airman in the Philippines, and when a parent of young children he was also a foster parent. As a retiree Chuck was a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteer and provided professional guidance to nonprofit organizations such as Child Life Council. Of particular interest during his last years was supporting outdoor experiences for wounded warriors through Freedom Hunters.

Rumbarger was also deeply committed to the NAILBA Charitable Foundation, and his actions truly embodied the mission of the Foundation:  to encourage volunteerism among NAILBA members and provide grant funds to worthy charitable organizations that serve to enhance the quality of life for those less fortunate—with a special emphasis on children.

In honor of Rumbarger’s impact on NAILBA and our industry, the NAILBA Charitable Foundation will be awarding a one-time grant (the Rumbarger Grant) to a charitable organization that Chuck would have supported. If you are interested in contributing funds to this grant in his memory, please contact Kathy Allison, 703-383-3072 or kallison@nailba.org.

“Personally, Chuck has been a mentor, a role model, and – most of all – a friend over the years,” said Chiasson, “What YOU do every day is a result of the efforts that people like Mike Flynn, Mende Lerner, Doug Mooers—and Chuck Rumbarger—as well as many others put in all those years ago. I hope you join me, both in mourning the loss and in gratitude for the service of this wonderful man.”

Amen, Jack.  Thank you, Chuck. [SPH]

Heartfelt congratulations to great Broker World friend Chuck Anderson, senior vice president of strategic relationship management at Prudential as the recipient of the 2015 NAILBA Chairman’s Award.  The award, created in 2009, was developed to recognize the efforts of a NAILBA volunteer who has performed “over and above” normal expectations during the Chairman’s term.

In presenting the award to Anderson, NAILBA Chairman David Long shared, “Chuck has been a cheerleader for our distribution channel for as long as I can remember, and has been a big part of his company’s relationship with NAILBA members and the annual meeting, leading the way in providing highly visible support through sponsorships and exhibits. This year in particular, he was strongly supportive of our newly formed advocacy partnership with AALU – his commitment extends beyond the annual meeting and the Charitable Foundation, to legislative initiatives and issues that impact the way our businesses are run.”

He continued, explaining, “Chuck has always been a strong supporter of NAILBA–from the carrier side. He has served on multiple NAILBA committees and on the Charitable Foundation board of directors,” concluding, “we are very grateful to have your support and enthusiasm, year after year.”

I know Chuck to be a tireless advocate for the brokerage industry, an enthusiastic contributor to many charitable causes, including the NAILBA Charitable Foundation (he even emailed me a contribution after the meeting when we didn’t connect!), and one of the most sincere and dedicated relationship builders I’ve ever met.  My hat’s off to you, Chuck, and thank you for your friendship. [SPH]

The insurance industry as a whole is too often vilified by the mainstream media, the Administration, and a debasing mass of ambulance chasers as heartless, greedy and at best the exclusive servant of the very wealthy.  It is my distinct privilege to provide evidence to the contrary on the heels of the 34th annual NAILBA meeting.

It has been my joy to serve on the NAILBA Charitable Foundation board for the past three years and it is with no small measure of gratitude that I’m able to report the outstanding efforts of the brokerage community and the NAILBA family in 2015 that will benefit countless less advantaged families and individuals.

Thanks to the contributions of more than 300 individuals, agencies, vendors and carriers, the NAILBA Charitable Foundation was able to distribute a total $245,000 to 17 extremely worthy charities, as well as $30,000 to the Life Happens organization.  Grants are designed to benefit programs or projects in the communities of and sponsored by individuals from NAILBA’s member agencies and corporate partners.  The 2015 selected charities received grants ranging from $5000 to $27,000, predominantly for causes involving children.The NAILBA Charitable Foundation is dedicated to providing funds to small, well-run charities that may not otherwise have access to additional funding.

The mission of the NAILBA Charitable Foundation is to encourage volunteerism among NAILBA members and provide grant funds to worthy charitable organizations that serve to enhance the quality of life for those less fortunate, with a special emphasis on children. To learn more about the work of the Foundation, and the impact it has had on NAILBA members and their communities, visit www.nailba.org.

Thank you one and all, for your effort, your compassion and the positive example you offer your peers, your customers, and most important for the comfort you give to those less fortunate than yourselves.  Damn the mainstream media!  Full speed ahead! [SPH]

What a night! Each year at the NAILBA annual meeting my wife and I have the great pleasure of sitting with three of our dearest friends, Eugene and Shirlee Cohen and their son Michael, at the Mooers Award dinner. I don’t ever seem to have enough time to chat during the event, always hopping up to take a few more pictures of the brokerage industry’s elite in all their black tie finery. This year, however, I was away from the table more than usual, as Shirlee usually tries to pry the name of the honoree from me, and I truly would make a lousy poker player, since in most cases, I can’t bluff my way out of anything. I’m so bad at it that whenever my friends play a poker game, they suggest that I play on a site similar to mega888 online; at least then no one will be able to see my tell. However, sometimes these websites don’t have the games that I normally play, so it can be hard to brush up on my skills when I’m not in the ‘zone’. Luckily I can go onto websites such as www.paybyphonebillcasino.uk to see what casino games are available on different sites, so I am not trawling through for ages.

Anyway, it is with true joy in my heart that I here recognize Eugene Cohen, Eugene Cohen Insurance Agency, Skokie, IL, for being named the 2015 recipient of the Douglas Mooers Award for Excellence, NAILBA’s, and the brokerage industry’s, highest honor.

After finding varying success in a number of occupations (he once sold watermelons out of a truck), an act of providence led Eugene, then in Cleveland, to begin sales training in 1963, specializing in disability income insurance with Massachusetts Indemnity Life Insurance Company. By 1967 he had become one of the youngest agency managers in company history. He built the agency from a struggling two person office to one of the company’s strongest. In 1970 he was transferred to one of the company’s flagship offices, in Chicago, with responsibility for managing a dozen agencies across the country. In 1980 the company changed direction and the Eugene Cohen Insurance Agency was born.

From that point on Eugene has been a tireless supporter of the brokerage distribution system. The agency has been a member of both NAILBA and LifeMark Partners for decades. He became a founding member of The Plus Group, a DI focused marketing group, and in 2004 was part of the initial planning and eventual formation of the International DI Society-receiving their lifetime achievement award in 2011. He has served on countless carrier BGA advisory boards, bringing lessons of the past and vision of the future to myriad insurance company executives.

But in my mind Eugene’s greatest industry achievement, on a tediously long list, is the fact that for over 50 years he has diligently helped train, educate and create personal growth in literally thousands of insurance agents–instilling in them not just the necessary components of insurance sales, but more important, the ethical mandates of integrity and the imperative that service to the greatest benefit of the consumer and his beneficiaries must always come first.

Eugene takes the greatest pride in his family. He and his delightful wife Shirlee have raised three sons to mirror their core beliefs in faith, integrity, a strong work ethic and the responsibility of giving back to the community and to those less fortunate than themselves. The Cohens are active supporters of many charities, among them Glenkirk, an organization that provides services to intellectually disabled children and adults, the Jewish United Fund of Chicago, the NAILBA Charitable Foundation, Heart Strings, the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the Wounded Warriors program.

As a lengthy list of the yet to be named honoree’s achievements was being read from the podium, my eyes were locked on my friends as the realization dawned that it wasn’t in fact “some company guy”-Eugene predictably humbly lowered his head, and Shirlee grabbed his arm in delight before turning to admonish “You lied to me!”

I’ll cherish that moment to my dying day, and it is with deep gratitude that I thank Eugene Cohen for decades of precious friendship and for his tireless service to our industry and the consumers it is our duty to protect. [SPH]

In a time when some associations are facing challenges retaining and growing membership, it is good to report that the International DI Society (IDIS) continues its steady growth.  Although this year’s conference seemed slightly smaller than last year’s 10th anniversary event, membership is still on the rise and the three day event featured great main stage speakers, very engaging breakout sessions, continuing education, great networking time and a nice awards banquet.

The dream of three disability insurance visionaries—Harold Petersen, Bill Barrett and the late Ron Cohen, the IDIS is the independent association for the disability income market, bringing together agents, BGAs, vendors and carrier representatives as members working together to advance awareness and address the needs of this segment of the industry.

The group’s highest honor, the W. Harold Petersen Lifetime Achievement Award went to Jack Schmitz, CLU, ChFC, CASL, DI & LTC Insurance Services, San Rafael, CA.  Schmitz has spent 35 years working in the DI business as a managing general agent.  He is a founding member of the IDIS, a member and past president of The Plus Group, a past president of his local NAIFA and SFSP chapters and sits on the boards of several local charities as well as carrier advisory boards.

In addition, the group chose Greg Burden, OWL Insurance Solutions, Denver, CO, to receive the Ron Cohen Producer’s Scholarship granted to a newer producer in the DI industry who exhibits the same dedication and passion that Mr. Cohen had for the industry

The IDIS is the NAHU/NAIFA for the disability income insurance market.  Underrepresented at all major independent associations—if addressed at all—the DI product line deserves better recognition and much wider sales acceptance.  The most wonderfully crafted life and annuity based solutions of the brightest advisor minds in the industry fall apart at the seams when an unprotected disability interrupts the client’s cash flow.  In my opinion, if our industry is truly anchored by advisors who care about their clients, their clients’ families and businesses, and the dreams their clients have for building a legacy, then DI needs to be a part of the discussion with nearly every client, a part of every industry group’s agenda and a part of every national conference’s curriculum.

I urge all who work diligently in, dabble in or only occasionally peek in on the disability product line to add their support to the IDIS.  Further, I urge all other industry associations to reach out to the IDIS and find a way to partner with them to provide a more robust DI presence at their meetings.  You can contact the International DI Society by telephone at 562-481-2381, via email:info@internationaldisociety.com, or visit their website: www.internationaldisociety.com.

Sad news, however, for the IDIS and our industry as a whole—announced at the IDIS meeting was the recent passing of DI giant Michael Eskra Sr., CLU, ChFC.  Eskra was one of the founding members of the IDIS and the recipient of the second W. Harold Petersen Lifetime Achievement Award.

Eskra began his insurance career with the Continental Insurance Company in the late 1950s before joining Provident Life and Accident, where he worked for 30 years, becoming their most successful branch manager.  In 1992 he started his own firm, Eskra & Associates, and in 2002, with Koll-Lenhoff, another leading DI BGA, formed DIBroker, LLC.  Today DIBrokerEast/Eskra & Associates is one of the three largest volume wholesalers of disability insurance in the country.  Fortunately Mike leaves the agency in good hands—three of his four sons are partners in the agency—Peter, Michael Jr. and David.  

Eskra spent his entire insurance career—over 50 years—selling, promoting, training agents in and advocating for disability income replacement insurance.  Recognizing the lack of training and training materials available to new agents coming into the industry (or those new to DI), Eskra published a training manual entitled Disability Income Training Manual—Everything You Need To Know About How To Market Disability Insurance.

My introduction to Mike Eskra came regrettably late, but I found him to be one of those rare people who was almost larger than life in accomplishment and yet easily approachable, very welcoming, friendly almost to a fault, quick witted and eager to share his great smile and hearty laugh.  The DI market and the industry as a whole has lost a great champion, and he will be missed. [SPH]

It has been the distinct pleasure of the Howard family to have been of service to the brokerage community and the insurance industry for 35 years.  Wow.  Maybe that old guy in the mirror really is me.

In 1980 a visionary gent took a list of 20,000 names from a dear friend, 27 advertising commitments, eight articles submitted by brokerage industry advocates, a deep, deep breath and a great leap of faith and published the September/October issue of this magazine.  William S. Howard, Carole A. Howard and Robert F. Edwards gave the brokerage industry its first dedicated national print voice.

A bit of the back story:  My father left law school (and tutoring remedial…oops…Introductory English) at Indiana University, having previously obtained a BS in English from the University of Missouri, when Mom found out she was pregnant with me.  Apparently “real” employment was at this point a threatening necessity.  His previous foray in to the working world had been as a bellhop.  Grandma was aghast and thought the marriage a travesty, as it was universally well known that bellhops were primarily procurers of women for hotel guests.  Mom had been directed to nursing school, as all actresses (her true passion in life) were universally known to be “loose women.”

I’m a bit fuzzy on the seduction of Academia and the path to IU, where Mom worked in a dentist’s office, but my unexpected intrusion apparently warranted a return to Kansas City—Mom to St. Luke’s as a surgical nurse, later a nurse in a doctor’s office, and Dad to an odd series of employment adventures that included a stint as a concrete saw salesman.  Through some providence he found positions at National Fidelity Life and Security Benefit Life, and caught the eye of a fellow who published a variety of banking and financial services magazines, becoming the editor and sole salesman for Mid America Insurance Magazine.  Mid America, in publication since the 1890’s, went to the entire membership of the PIA, Big I and Life Underwriters associations in eleven states in the Midwest.

In 1973 Mid America published its first Life and Health Brokerage Edition, which soon became the largest and most profitable issue of each following year.  In 1976 Dad purchased the publication from the gentleman who hired him and a few years of thin pork chops and macaroni and cheese followed, but the success of the August brokerage issue and the counsel of friends like Ron Dolan, Gary Dworkin, Rudy Hagelman, Seixas Milner, George Van Dusen, Gerry Tessler, Ralph Passman and too many other brokerage giants to name led him to ultimately decide that insurance brokerage needed, deserved and could possibly sustain its own print voice.

Our first issue’s lead editorial was an address by George Joseph, then president of the Life Insurance Marketing & Research Association (LIMRA) titled “Brokerage Today And Tomorrow.”  Dolan, Dworkin and Van Dusen contributed articles; Dolan (First Colony Life), Tessler, Dworkin and Passman ran ads; Dolan, Dworkin, Hagelman and Milner were on the editorial advisory board.

My wife would say I’m going “all over hell and half of Georgia” to get to my point.  Which is:  long before Dad did his part to help these brokerage giants and countless others shape and found the National Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies (NAILBA), the place where these and many other lifelong business and personal relationships were strengthened and renewed annually was the National Association of Life Underwriters (NALU) national convention.  Now the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA), this association did more to help insurance agents survive and thrive than any other.  Period.  Not only would this publication likely not exist, but the very roots of the brokerage business as a whole and the success of the lion’s share of the insurance agents who’ve been instrumental in the shaping of the industry can logically be traced to the tools, advice, mentoring, advocacy, ethics, comradery, products, sales assistance, education, drive and sense of purpose found and refined in the national, state and local meetings of Life Underwriters associations.  Attendees at the national convention spanned many generations (and it seemed much more evenly distributed 30 years ago).  It’s a near certainty that most, if not all of your lives and practices were in some way shaped by NALU.  I owe a lot of hot meals, nice cars and season tickets to this association.  What do you owe to NALU/NAIFA?

Today NAIFA has a wealth of material resources designed to help agents, particularly those relatively new to the business, survive and thrive, but too many independent—brokerage—agents choose not to become involved in their local associations.  I suggest that those of you not involved are directly responsible for whatever perceived lack of value you see in NAIFA membership.  It’s that simple.  If you’re not involved you have zero opportunity to influence its value to you, and, more important, the value of NAIFA to your independent agent/financial advisor/brokerage agent peers and new agents seeking to find a meaningful career serving the insurance needs of the currently critically underinsured American public.

I urge you to seek the satisfaction found in giving back to the industry that has given so much to you by becoming significantly involved in your local NAIFA chapter.  More, urge your colleagues to do the same.  The agents currently striving to find success in our industry deserve the same advantages you enjoyed at the elbows of the previous generation of grizzled veterans and bright minds who shared their experience and expertise with you.

For me the precious friendships, guidance and sense of purpose I have today can all be traced back in some way to those NALU annual conventions, where contacts were made, ad schedules were solidified, the important issues of the day and direction of the industry were discussed and new alliances were born.  Broker World, and our effort to aid independent producers in our own way, owes whatever modicum of success we can claim to those NALU/NAIFA roots.  If the “new agent crisis” seems a bit daunting, perhaps you can focus first on how to help with the “agent retention crisis” and help those already trying to make a career out of insurance sales by sharing your experience, strength and hope in your local, state and national NAIFA meetings.