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.
