The 2019 Life, Health and Annuity Professional Generational Recognition Program

We’ve run a “30 Under 30″ recognition program for several years.

The results were great: We got to feature dozens of young life, health and annuity sector professionals who are out there trying to make a living by protecting people against the risks of getting sick, becoming disabled, dying, or outliving their income.

But then we thought: What about all of the people in their 30s, 40s or later years who shift from other fields into insurance, and never get a chance to be insurance professionals under 30?

What about people who emailed us about the program when they were 29 years and 330  days old and found out that we posted the notice about the 2019 program when they were 30 years and 10 days old?

What about all of the many insurance professionals in their 80s, 90s or even 100s? Why can’t we figure out how to honor?

So, this year, we’re trying a new Generational Recognition approach.

The Categories

We’ll start out with the following generational breakdowns: Throngs Under 30; Many in the Middle; and Eminences Over 80. We reserve the right to adjust our categories to fit the entries.

Eligibility

• Anyone, including the nominees, can nominate a nominee.
• Nominees can be of any age.
• Nominees should be based primarily in the United States, Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.
• Nominees should be people who focus primarily on operating in the individual life insurance, individual annuity, individual major medical, individual disability, individual long-term care insurance, individual dental, individual vision, individual supplement benefits or micro-group (roughly: 25 lives and under) benefits markets, or related individual or micro-group markets.
• Nominees can work in any role associated with the individual and micro-group life, health and annuity markets, such as sales, marketing, underwriting, actuarial services,  claim administration or compliance.
• We will recognize a maximum of two nominees per organization, but we will define “company” broadly. Example: If three or more nominees work for entities, such as ABC Agency and XYZ Agency, that, legally, are part of the same company, but are based in separate locations and, to the outside world, look like separate companies, we’ll classify those nominees as coming from separate companies. We reserve the discretion to interpret this provision by looking at the nominees’ organizations’ websites.

The Nomination Process

1. Please send us the following information IN THE BODY OF THE EMAIL (not in a Microsoft Word document, PDF file or other attachment), in English:

The nominee’s:

• Name.
• Age on the date the nomination form was submitted.
• Usual work location.
• Company or organization, if applicable.
• Title.
• Functional, role if the title does not make that clear.
• Professional designations.

2. A nominator other than the nominee should provide the following, IN THE BODY OF THE EMAIL:

A description, in 100 or fewer words, of what the nominee has done, beyond normal work duties, that has made the nominee stand out in terms of getting people covered, serving the general community, serving the insurance community, or being interesting in some other unusual or important way.

A nominator who is not the nominee must promise us that the nominee knows about being nominated and has consented to being nominated.

3. Insurance professionals who are nominating themselves should provide the following IN THE BODY OF THE EMAIL:

a. A description, in 100 or fewer words, of what the nominee has done, beyond normal work duties, that has made the nominee stand out in terms of getting people covered, serving the general community, serving the insurance community, or being interesting in some other unusual or important way.

b. The following personal statement:

1. If they’re under 30: 100 words about what they wish older people understood about clients and prospects under 30, or, good jokes that don’t seem to show up on a Google search and that we can use.
2. If they’re in the middle: 100 words about what they wish younger people and older people understood about clients and prospects around their age. Or, jokes.
3. If they’re over 80: 100 words about any ideas, anecdotes, jokes, or thoughts about clients and prospects around their age that they want other people to know about.

4. Photo

A nominator should attach a phone photo of the nominee in the JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP or PDF format to the nomination email.

The photo should be at least about 4 inches wide (or 400 pixels wide) when viewed at normal magnification on a computer screen.

In most cases, the photographer must be either the nominee or the individual nominator; the nominator should say who took the photo in the body of the nomination email. If anyone else has taken the photo, the nominator must promise in the email that the nominator has the rights to the photo, and that we are free to publish the photo without charge.

5. Nomination email subject line.

A nominator must put GENERATIONAL RECOGNITION, in all capital letters in the subject line of the email.

If a nominator forgets to do this, the nominator can simply resend the nomination email with GENERATIONAL RECOGNITION in the subject line.

6. Confusion

If something here seems unclear to a nominator, the nominator can interpret the provision in any reasonable way.

7. Discretion

We reserve the right to exercise discretion in interpreting these rules, and to change the rules if conditions change, or if we receive more or fewer entries than expected. We also reserve the right to find nominees of our own, and to block would-be nominators or nominees who, in our view, are time-consuming to handle.

8. Where to Submit

Please submit completed entries to abell@alm.com.

Nomination Evaluation Process

We will evaluate entries based on the following criteria:

• Adherence to nomination email requirements, including the deadline.
• Whether the nomination includes a nominee photo that we can use.
• The originality or importance of the nominee’s achievements.
• Our subjective response to a nominee’s personal statement.
• If a nominee has provided jokes: Whether the jokes made us laugh, and whether the jokes are suitable for our readers to read them at work.
• Geographic, market sector, organizational, generational, achievement and idea diversification.

Deadline

Noon Eastern Daylight Time Aug. 1.

We reserve the right to extend that deadline, if conditions warrant that, and to offer people grace periods.

Recognition

We plan to recognize the nominees who will be recognized in one or more articles to be published in late August and, possibly, early September. We’ll recognize a minimum of five nominees in each of the three generational categories.

— Read 30 Life and Health Professionals Under 30: Part 1, on ThinkAdvisor.

— Connect with ThinkAdvisor Life/Health on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.