Close Close
Sign In
Newsletters
Popular Financial Topics Discover relevant content from across the suite of ALM legal publications From the Industry More content from ThinkAdvisor and select sponsors Investment Advisor Issue Gallery Read digital editions of Investment Advisor Magazine Tax Facts Get clear, current, and reliable answers to pressing tax questions
Luminaries Awards
Podcast Center Video Center Webcasts Resource Center Events
About ThinkAdvisor Contact Us Advertise With Us Asset & Logo Licensing Sitemap Terms of Service Privacy Policy Copyright © 2024 ALM Global, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
ThinkAdvisor
Amy Friedrich. Credit: Principal

Life Health > Running Your Business > Marketing and Lead Generation

Life Insurers Search for Ways to Better Protect the World

By Allison Bell

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

What You Need to Know

  • Speakers shook their heads at poverty and income inequality.
  • Gordon Watson suggested rich countries will soon have a $480 trillion retirement asset shortfall.
  • Amy Friedrich said LIMRA members have work to do fixing all that.

LIMRA was once the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association, and speakers at its latest annual conference want to find ways to heal the world with life insurance, marketing and research.

LIMRA started the three-day event Sunday in National Harbor, Maryland. The speakers on the podium talked about the conflicts facing the United States and the world.

Ron Insana, a CNBC contributor and Dynasty Financial Partners’ chief market strategist, shook his head at the U.S. House of Representatives’ difficulties with picking a new speaker. “If you don’t have a speaker by the middle of November, there’s a shutdown,” he said. “This is going to be a tougher environment.”

Other speakers worried about poverty, income inequality, and the many family breadwinners around the world who lack life insurance.

Gordon Watson, chairman of AXA’s Asia business, pointed out that the eight largest world economies are on track to have a $480 trillion retirement savings shortfall by 2050.

What it means: The world needs you.

Amy Friedrich, a Principal Financial executive who served as the moderator for the morning general session Tuesday, said the people at the LIMRA conference, and financial services marketers in general, are in the right place to make a difference.

“We sit at the center of financial literacy,” Friedrich said.

She suggested that many of the problems the speakers described would be much smaller and easier to solve if more people understood personal finance and took simple steps to save money and protect themselves with insurance.

“That’s our job,” Friedrich said.

The U.S. market: U.S. life insurers are hoping that modernizing their information technology systems will help increase their efficiency and reach, and the LIMRA conference exhibitor’s list was full of insurtech vendors like Ebix Exchange, Equisoft, Hexure, iPipeline and Majesco.

Life insurers face intense competition from other financial services providers, and concerns about how to hold the attention of consumers who are dealing with inflation, a somewhat cooler job market and the effects of the return of student loan payment bills and rising bills for variable-rate mortgage loans and credit card debt.

LIMRA and Boston Consulting Group released a life insurance executive survey report showing that about 33% of executives list finding a way to grow as a top challenge, up from 24% in 2021 and up from 22% in 2019.

About 66% identified investments in customer service technology as a priority.

At the conference, speakers suggested that improving wellness tech is another way to demonstrate their relevance to consumers and, possibly, manage their own exposure to health and mortality risk.

Brooks Tingle, the CEO of John Hancock, talked about his company’s high-profile Vitality wellness incentive program, and Sears Merritt of MassMutual talked about his company’s efforts to help people get access to Grail’s new cancer screening blood test and Genomics PLC’s genetic risk assessment program.

The world: Life insurers in many countries outside the United States face new capital standards and accounting rules that are even more challenging than those facing life insurers in the United States, and speakers at a general session on the global environment emphasized that their companies must operate profitably and reward shareholders.

But Watson, the AXA executive, said he believes insurers have to find ways to stick to their core mission and improve customers’ lives by assuming risk.

“We’re here to protect what matters,” Watson said. “Not just to sell bank substitute products.”

Alexandra Quiroga, the CEO of AXA Colpatria in Colombia, said one key element is persuading middle-income consumers to use some of the large sums they’re spending on restaurants and travel on insurance. “I do believe there’s a lot to do in terms of education,” she said.

Augusto Diaz-Leante, Swiss Re’s head of life and health for continental Europe, said one way to make a difference is to develop life insurance products and other protection products for the many people in the world with diabetes, hepatitis and other serious chronic conditions.

Amy Friedrich. Credit: Principal

Allison Bell

Think_Allison

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.