AALU Forms Own PAC

The AALU and NAIFA still share office space in Falls Church, Va., but the groups now maintain separate offices in Washington, near Capitol Hill.

The AALU once identified itself on its Web site as a NAIFA conference but in recent years has stopped doing so.

“NAIFA will continue to be important,” says Marc Cadin, an AALU lobbyist. “They have a broader set of issues; we focus on the issues of the advanced market. It’s a different level of focus and concentration on specific issues. But it is complementary to NAIFA’s job. It always has been and always will be.”

NAIFA is the “grass roots voice for the agents’ community,” Cadin says. “It has members in every congressional district throughout the country.”

At the AALU, “we are ‘grass tops,’ fewer numbers, higher quality relationships,” Cadin says. “We focus on the top producers.”

Jeff Taggart, president of NAIFA, issued a statement welcoming the birth of AALU PAC.

“As a member of AALU, as well as NAIFA president, I congratulate AALU on the creation of their new PAC, an endeavor that will bolster the joint efforts of NAIFA and AALU to address the tough challenges facing the life insurance industry,” Taggart says in the statement.

At the American Council of Life Insurers, Washington, “we look at the AALU as an indispensable partner to our advocacy efforts,” ACLI President Frank Keating says in the ACLI’s statement about the new PAC.