The Importance of Life Insurance Awareness Month

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HOST: Welcome to the NAIFA Advocacy podcast, the broadcast about important legislative issues affecting the insurance industry. I’m Andy Moyer, Communications Producer for NAIFA. As many of you know the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education or simply the LIFE Foundation, is a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing the public’s need for education about life, health, disability and long term care insurance. LIFE seeks to remind people of the important role agents perform in helping families, businesses and individuals find the insurance products that best fit their needs. Today we’re speaking with David Woods, CEO of NAIFA and President of LIFE.

For the past two years NAIFA has been involved with Life Insurance Awareness Month. Can you tell us what LIAM is and when it occurs?

DAVID WOODS: This is an exciting time. This is a time when NAIFA members can really improve their sales activity. With all the attention that will be paid to life insurance by the entire industry during the month of September their prospects and clients are gonna be ready to talk to them about life insurance during the month, and the collaboration between Life and NAIFA is what’s gonna make that possible.

HOST: Can you tell us a little bit more about how that’s gonna become possible?

DAVID WOODS: Yes I can. LIFE will be doing a number of things during the month. We’ll be doing heavy advertising in magazines across the country. We will be doing a lot of media works with newspapers, radio stations. TV stations will be picking up stories about life insurance and its importance. We’ll be supporting the sales activities of agents both directly and also through their insurance carriers. Over 100 insurance companies are actually participating in Life Insurance Awareness Month to help support their producers as well as educate their prospects and clients about the importance of life insurance.

All of this is coming together during the month and will be added to by, we hope and expect, proclamations from both houses of Congress, by the President of the United States, by fifty governors across the country, by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. All of these folks, all of these bodies, are collaborating to make sure that the public understands the vital role that life insurance plays in their financial plans, and this opens a door wide for NAIFA members to really take advantage of it.

HOST: You mentioned that you’re gonna be doing advertising in newspapers and on television and also there’s a lot of campaigning on the radio about this, and you use your special spokesperson that you select for Life Insurance Awareness Month. Can you tell us a little bit about your spokesperson?

DAVID WOODS: You know one of the exciting things about Life Insurance Awareness Month is that for the fourth straight year we actually have a celebrity who will be out representing the industry to the public, talking about life insurance, talking about the important role that life insurance could have played in their lives had there been some. In this case our celebrity spokesperson is better known as Mary Katherine Gallagher but whose real name is Molly Shannon from Saturday Night Live. While she’s a wonderful comedienne she does not treat this subject humorously. This is very serious. She has her own real life story. She lost her mother and her sister at a very young age in a car accident, and had they had the life insurance her life would have been very, very much easier as would that of her family.

So it’s an important topic. She treats it beautifully, and we’re very, very excited to have her talking with the public about the importance of life insurance.

HOST: She’s also going to make an appearance at this year’s convention in Washington, D.C. in September, correct?

DAVID WOODS: Molly Shannon will be on the main stage at the NAIFA convention here in Washington, D.C. in December. Once again NAIFA’s been good enough to allow LIFE to have some time on the main platform to share with the attendees all of the things that they can do to take advantage of Life Insurance Awareness Month in their own professional lives.

HOST: Obviously there’s a very important reason for establishing Life Insurance Awareness Month. Are there a large percentage of people who don’t have insurance coverage?

DAVID WOODS: Unfortunately the tragedy is in this country that some 68 million Americans say that they need more life insurance either because they don’t have any or they don’t have enough. That’s a lot of people. That’s probably 40% or so of the adult population of this country. That’s a very, very big number. So our challenge and we feel, the industry’s obligation is to help the American people understand how essential life insurance is and how to get it. To talk to a NAIFA member who can help them with their life insurance needs. That’s our objective.

HOST: That sounds excellent. Really a great charge this whole month is going to have, and it’s obviously not going to stop with just September.

DAVID WOODS: Although Life Insurance Awareness Month is the month of September it really has a tale. I mean the momentum carries right through October, November, into December and it’s a terrific way for NAIFA members to really wind up their year in a strong fashion.

HOST: I wish you all luck with putting this whole thing together. It sounds like you’re well underway.

DAVID WOODS: I think we are and thank you.

HOST: And thank you for joining us on our podcast today.

DAVID WOODS: My pleasure.

HOST: NAIFA encourages you to reach out to your legislators and ask them to support this important national public awareness campaign in September. For more information on how to contact your elected officials log onto NAIFA's legislative action center at www.naifa.org/advocacy.

Membership in NAIFA is all about your success. We give you the tools you need to grow your business and propel your career as an insurance or financial advisor. Learn more about becoming a NAIFA member and join today at www-dot-naifa-dot-org-slash-join.

This 2007 podcast is a copyrighted production of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. All rights are reserved

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Comments

[Term Life Insurance Quotes]

This is really helpful since we all know that not all are aware on the relevance of life insurance. This is a good way to to tell and broaden up the knowledge of the people on how important life insurance is.