I have a great appreciation for impaired risk underwriting and the carriers, BGAs and brokers who work actively at finding coverage at a fair rate for those with medical conditions (or, more personally culpable, eating habits and other albatrosses…albatrii?) that place them outside the marble palaces of the super preferred, the gated communities of the preferred, or even the four bedroom, three and a half bath comfort of the stalwart standards. Now I’m not quite a grass mat in a yurt, but I digress.
The brokerage business has its roots in the substandard market, finding coverage for those clients spurned by more conservative career carriers. As more aggressive pricing followed the increased awareness of actual risk, competition for those qualifying for standard or better classifications increased and what today we view as being of best service to those in need—finding the best product/price balance for customers, healthy or less so—unfairly branded many with a scarlet letter. Fortunately that perception has morphed by and large into a realistic view of greater choice equals being of greater service.
Service to those in need, healthy or less, is the moral payday for insurance professionals. Career or independent, many carrier contracts or just a few. I had a conversation with a young (and new) producer a number of years ago, who happened to be employed by a captive/career company but found himself attending a brokerage meeting with his broker father. The lightbulb of greater choice was beginning to glow, and he questioned whether he was actually doing a disservice to his customers by hard-selling his very limited life product selection. My counsel to him was to continue his career for the present, pointing out that he was gaining valuable knowledge that would make him a better advisor as his path, with the ultimate goal of independence entrenched, progressed. I suggested that he recognize that even though he was perhaps not as able as his father to find the best products for his customers, that as his prospects’ initial, or perhaps only, contact with a life insurance salesperson, he was still providing much needed coverage for families who quite likely would have none without him.
LIMRAs Facts About Life 2016, prepared for this year’s Life Insurance Awareness Month in cooperation with Life Happens, bear out this disheartening truth. Just one of many helpful items in the fact sheet: In 2016, more households who believe they need more life insurance say the reason they haven’t purchased is because they haven’t been approached by a financial professional (25 percent in 2010 versus 35 percent in 2016).
Its perhaps not statistically defensible, but I would add that another percentage of families remain un- or under-protected due to attitudes simmered by a liberal media and their fawned-upon icons who portray “Insurance Companies” as monolithic, heartless institutions serving as hedonistic financial playgrounds for the ultra rich. Our industry’s consumer advertising unfortunately too rarely does much to mitigate this belief, often talking about ways to amass income for a comfortable retirement in conditions outside the experience of many potential consumers.
Many of you advisors/brokers/producers/agents make a very nice living providing retirement, estate and legacy counsel to those who’ve done well for themselves in their business careers. More power to you! Don’t think for a moment that I think one shouldn’t reap the rewards of hard work, prudent investment and or innovative thought. The “one percent” and many thousands of conservatives are employing the vast majority of the people bitching about them, providing the income that pays not only for the poster board and markers they brandish at their marches, but their parents’ Subarus, Volvos and Escalades that they drove to the rallies while texting on their iPhones.
I have a dear friend who has absolutely lost his mind during this current election cycle, one more vitriolically polarizing than any I can remember. I, and my blood pressure, are fortunate not to be on Facebook, but my wife is, and friended him several years before the recent primaries. I occasionally get a masochistic twinge and listen to her renditions of several of his 20+ daily posts demonizing a particular entrepreneur and all who feel compelled to vote for him. Steadfast in his manic denial of any legitimate mitigating factor and deafeningly silent on any of the treacheries of his second choice, he “works” for an entrepreneur who apparently allows him a great deal of time each day for Facebook. Either that or he feels the time he’s stealing from his employer makes him somehow closer akin to his Jesse James as Robin of Locksley candidate.
By the time many of you read this the election will be decided and we will find a way to adapt to either a semblance of responsible economic policy or another four years of industry adverse conditions (to say nothing of a Supreme Court even more determined to turn the Constitution into a left-wing comic book).
My elusive point is this: No widow receiving a death benefit check has a negative feeling about life insurance beyond wishing there had been more. Those who’ve been fortunate enough to create a decent retirement and estate already appreciate our industry for what you can provide, but less so those for whom a $100,000 or $250,000 death benefit could make a huge difference in the future of their families.
Your efforts every day provide immeasurable solace for families in crisis, and for that you should be applauded, rather than sneered at by proxy. But my feeling is that the most effective way to lessen the traction of our detractors is by reaching out to serve those lower commission clients—filling the void of those without insurance advisor contact—and thus changing perceptions one future grieving but grateful family at a time.[SPH]
