GovPod: NAIFA Advocacy Podcasts

How Expanding SCHIP Could Affect the Health Insurance Industry

Opening Music Plays

HOST: Hi and welcome to the NAIFA advocacy pod cast. I'm Andy Moyer, communication producer for NAIFA. The State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, provides federal funds to states on a matching basis to help fund health insurance coverage for uninsured children living in low-income households. SCHIP was set to expire on September 30th of 2007 unless re-authorized by Congress. Today AHIA executive vice president, Diane Boyle joins us to discuss the importance of SCHIP and what it means to NAIFA and AHIA members. Hi Diane, and welcome.

DIANE BOYLE: Thanks Andy.

HOST: First can you address this September 30, 2007 expiration date. Now that the deadline has come and gone has SCHIP expired?

DIANE BOYLE: Yes, Andy, the September 30th expiration date has come and gone. However, Congress has passed a continuing resolution that will allow for SCHIP to continue even though that date has expired. The new expiration date is now November 16th. So if Congress does nothing from now until the 15th the children will still be covered. The new deadline obviously is the 15th and if they don't act by then then SCHIP will indeed expire.

HOST: So why did the President veto the compromise bill?

DIANE BOYLE: Well, as you mentioned there was a compromise bill. The House and the Senate both looked at this issue very closely and the idea of providing coverage to children is a bipartisan effort; it's supported on both sides of the Hill, both in the House and the Senate. And the two bills that were originally passed were very different. There was a compromise bill and the President still felt that that compromise was above what he wanted to spend.

It is funded with a tobacco tax which is something he's also opposed to doing and overall he feels that the compromise bill will still pull children that are above that low income level and pull them off of private insurance. He feels that this is a step towards the government program rather than an incentive for low income individuals to purchase health care coverage.

HOST: Along those same lines I read in some recent articles that some children who are eligible for this program haven't used the funds. So why are they thinking about expanding this if the funds aren't being utilized to their fullest extent?

DIANE BOYLE: That's a good point Andy. One of the concerns at AHIA and NAIFA have with SCHIP in general is that there are a number of children that are eligible for the program now that are not currently enrolled and if we look to expand it we'd rather see efforts focused on getting those eligible for the new program enrolled first before you look at raising the income levels for those children. Also some of the states have used some of the funds for adults rather than just children.

And again it should be, in the association's opinion, focused on those low income children that the program was set up for children not necessarily for adults. And this is true with the President's veto as well, it's not that he was voting for vetoing the program, he's looking at expanding it as well, but he's looking at expanding it to the tune of $11 billion opposed to the $35 billion that was in the compromise bill.

HOST: So how does SCHIP affect NAIFA and AHIA members?

DIANE BOYLE: Well, it's a very good question. As you know the Congress is operating under what's called a PAGO (ph.) rule and for any new incentive or expanded that has to be paid for. So if you're going to expand the SCHIP program beyond where it is now, the Congress has to come up with dollars to fund it. And they can do so in a number of ways. They can either increase taxes, which is what was included in the compromise bill; they were using tobacco tax to fund the legislative. The originally House version had two funding provisions that were very much of concern to our members.

One would have put a $2 per person tax on each health insurance plan. Obviously the cost of insurance is one of the issues that we feel is keeping folks uninsured. We need to address the affordability issue in order to get more people covered and if you're taxing them at a greater rate then that's not going to do anything to address the affordability issue. The other funding mechanism was a provision that would decrease funding to Medicare Advantage plans. And that's obviously something that's of interest to many of our members and not something that we were in favor of.

So as this program evolved why it's extremely important to the NAIFA and AHIA members is that funding mechanism may come back and hurt the industry sales in general. The other issue to look at is if the SCHIP program were expanded well beyond the low income children what you're going to find is that those children that have private insurance now will drop that private insurance and become part of the SCHIP program.

HOST: And are there opportunities for NAIFA and AHIA members in the re-authorization?

DIANE BOYLE: There are. One of the things, you know we talked about PAGO and that you have to find the money for this and if I were a member of Congress and I'm looking to find the funds, you can look at creating new taxes, which is often not welcome with open arms by the constituents or you can look at programs that currently are tax advantaged. And there are a number of our programs that are tax advantaged now.

If you look at just the health insurance, employer provided health care and long term insurance receive $628.5 billion, cafeteria plans is $185.5 billion. So there's significant dollars in our products that are attractive. It posed to raising taxes if you can come to one of these programs and take some of those funding dollars away to pay for a new program, such as SCHIP, that's attractive. And the opportunity for our members is to go back to their members of Congress and explain why these tax advantages exist for life insurance, why the tax advantages exist for employer provided health care and long term insurance.

What are the benefits and re-establish that understanding of our products and why they intended, the tax incentive is needed and should stay in place.

HOST: So Diane now that the House failed to override the President's veto and a new compromise bill has been presented in the House what can we expect to happen with SCHIP?

DIANE BOYLE: Well, you're right Andy on the 25th of October the House of Representatives passed yet another slightly modified version of the compromise bill. It is still $15 billion more than what the President has said that he would like or would be willing to accept. The Senate is expected to vote on the legislation sometime this week. What we'll see is that the President will once again veto the legislation.

The House was short the 290 votes needed to override the veto, but my expectation is that they will go through the process, they will attempt to override the veto and will end up passing a continuing resolution in order to continue the program into 2008. As we said earlier the continuing resolution that's in place now expires on November 16th. In addition to covering the children there are a number of issues that are in play.

You're looking at the political side of things. Why one would ask would the House attempt to override the President's veto if they're short the 290 votes needed to do so? And a lot of that is maneuvering for the elections. We're going to see the Democrats say the Republicans stood in the way, stood behind the President on blocking coverage for children. Some of the Republicans are saying no, that's going to help them in the election because their constituents are going to say no, you were pushing for a more modest SCHIP proposal.

One of the bigger concerns for our members is that when they begin renegotiating, after the continuing resolution expires and they look at this again in 2008, some of those provisions that we talked about earlier, the funding provisions, the $2 tax on each health plan per person could come back into play. The cuts to the Medicare Advantage program could come back into play. So what we're doing on this end is monitoring it very closely to see that once this becomes a live issue again that the advantages that our products now have aren't compromised and that there are no new taxes that are being looked at in order to pay for any new effort that's put forth.

HOST: Now, is there a chance that there could be a change in the level of percentage above poverty level that some children will be eligible or not eligible after this alteration or is that?

DIANE BOYLE: Not with the continuing resolution. What the continuing resolution does is it takes what's in place now, what was originally set to expire September 30th and goes from those provisions, those definitions of what are followed. So any expansion to the program will not happen until the House and the Senate both pass it and the President signs it. So right now we're just looking at a continuation of the program as it was originally set up.

HOST: Diane thank you very much for being on our pod cast here today.

DIANE BOYLE: Thanks Andy, I appreciate the opportunity to share our thoughts.

HOST: NAIFA and AHIA encourage you to learn more about SCHIP and how it will affect your business. For more information on SCHIP log onto AHIA's website at www.ahia.net and look in the Take Notes section.

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

Closing Music Plays.

NAIFA Marks Another Successful Day on the Hill

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HOST: Welcome to the NAIFA Advocacy Podcast.  I’m Andy Moyer, Communications Producer for NAIFA and I’m speaking to you from the Senate Office Buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

MINDY REYEZ: Hi.  I’m Mindy Reyes with NAIFA Scottsdale, Local President.  I work for Country Insurance and Financial Services as an agent.  This is my first time at the convention and just having a great time.

HOST: Mindy is one of over 1200 members of NAIFA here on the Hill today who are meeting with their congressmen to advocate for the insurance and financial industries on behalf of all NAIFA members. 

MINDY REYEZ: This has been a blast.  We had the opportunity to meet with John Kyles' staff.  She was very informative and kind and answered all our questions and spent as much time as we wanted.  Our next appointment was to be with Senator McCain.  He wasn’t available but as we were walking in the hall we happened to see him and got the opportunity to chat with him as we told him we were constituents of Arizona.  So he took time to stop and shake our hands and listen to what we had to say and we were able to drop off our packets to his office.  So it’s been fun.

HOST: Because the NAIFA convention was held in Washington, D.C. this year, members who attended the meeting were prepped by NAIFA staff and afforded the opportunity to meet with their congressmen. Along with Mindy we spoke with other NAIFA members who participated in this historic day on the Hill experience. Let’s listen to what a few of the other NAIFA members had to say about their meetings throughout the day.

SCOTT SURNETT: My name is Scott Surnett.  I’m with NAIFA Cedar Valley in Iowa and I’m a financial advisor.  I am a member of YAT.  In fact, I’m privileged to serve as the YAT National Chair this year as the incoming Chair.  And so far the convention has been fantastic and I’ve met with three offices now, two senators and a House of Representative member.  And we’ve had great meetings and it’s really a unique opportunity to have a chance to meet with our members of congress. 

And I would just encourage people who have not had a chance to do that to do it.  It’s really a neat opportunity and something I think everyone should at least be able to do once in their lifetime.  NAIFA staff was fantastic in making sure we understood what the issues are, what the areas that we want to advocate are and they trained us well with respect to speakers in the morning sessions as well as print materials. So we felt we had a concise agenda to go in with and I think they heard our messages.

I think the best message I can take back and share with folks in my local or in the state is that if we’re not advocating for our beliefs, by default someone else is advocating against us.  And that’s why I think it’s really important that we stand up for the things that we want to fight for our clients for and it’s really important to do so.  If we don’t, again, we’re going to be advocated against and we certainly don’t want that.

BARRY JOHNSON:  I am Barry Johnson and I am from Wellman, Iowa, and I’m a Past President of the Iowa City Association and I’m a Financial Advisor Registered Representative with Inner Securities.  We talked about the four basic issues – the Pay-Go tax incentives, the 12B1 Fees, the repeal of the McCarran–Ferguson Act and Life Insurance Awareness Month.  So it went very well.  You see the senators on television, you hear them on the radio, but there’s nothing like being here in person.  It’s an experience you’ll never forget.

NICK STOSIK: I’m Nick Stosik from Reno, Nevada, in the northern Nevada chapter, and I am a Multi-Line Agent but also I am a CFP so I also focus on financial services and financial planning.  I’ve been the State PAC Chairman for many years, the State PIC Chairman for many years, and so I’ve always been very involved in the issues of insurance and how they impact the legislation and those sort of things.  We got to meet with four members of the Senator staff and the meeting went well. 

We had a lot of people in there and a lot of ideas and a lot of discussions.  Senator Reid, being the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, obviously it was important for us to be able to get NAIFA’s positions to as many people in his staff as possible.  So I think we were successful in doing that.  But the NAIFA website is absolutely invaluable in telling you what are the major issues that our association is facing, not only in national issues but as well as state issues. 

They even have different issues that states are going to be voting on or looking at.  And so if you go to the website, you’ve got a wealth of information to find out what those issues are, what NAIFA’s positions are, the history, the background.  And really, if you have those summarizations, it’s all you need to be prepared.

HOST: One of the advantages for the people who participated in this event was that they received firsthand instruction from NAIFA’s legislative staff prior to their meetings.  Nick makes a valid point in that even if you didn’t attend the convention or have the opportunity to prepare with NAIFA staff on site, you can always access NAIFA’s website for up-to-date information on important legislative issues.  This will help your grass roots efforts, a very important element for an advocacy program to be successful.

TERRY KULTIMBAH: Terry Kultimbah.  I’m with the San Diego Association.  I’m a Past Local and State President of NAIFA California.  I’m a Wealth Management Consultant with Phoenix Life and we have just finished a meeting with Ahmad Thomas, one of the legislative staff members of Senator Feinstein’s office.  I’ve been fortunate enough to be back here multiple times in the last five or six years and this is the third or fourth time I’ve met with Ahmad.  It’s critical that we build those kind of long-term relationships with members of congress cause it’s only through that grass roots effort that we really at crunch time are we able to deliver on our real issues.

And without that relationship we’re just another constituent out there.  So it’s absolutely critical that we build those grass roots relationships from day one.

HOST: For information on the NAIFA Advocacy Program or how you can get involved at the grass roots level go to www.naifa.org/advocacy.  We end this podcast with some observations from a NAIFA convention first-timer, our recently instated NAIFA CEO John Healy.

JOHN HEALY: I’ve done this for over 25 years and the meetings that we’ve had so far throughout the day I have been so impressed and so proud of the way that NAIFA members from across the country, in each and every one of the meetings that I’ve been in, the message that they bring to their congressmen and senators.  Every one of them have been interested in hearing that message. 

The points that they’ve made, the stories that they’ve brought to back up the points, whether it’s talking about the importance of the senator or congressman supporting LIAM, the Life Insurance Awareness Month, and the reason that they need to step forward to help to continue to encourage families to make investments in our industry’s products coming forward, the impact and the knowledge that our members bring to their jobs, it’s obvious that their passion for what we do just comes through as they talk.

Because many of the congressman and senators ask, you know, "Why do you do this for a living?  What is it that your industry really provides"?  Even though they may think they know about the insurance industry, they obviously don’t understand the important role that we play in American families’ financial security and freedom.

HOST: Thanks to the efforts of NAIFA members during the "Day on the Hill" campaign and the weeks that follow the NAIFA convention, the House and Senate officially declared September "Life Insurance Awareness Month".

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.naifa.org/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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The Significance of Pay-Go and how it Affects NAIFA's Members

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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.  Lately we’ve been hearing more and more about something called “Pay-Go.”  To learn more about Pay-Go and how it affects NAIFA’s members we’re speaking with Michael Kerley, senior vice president of federal government relations at NAIFA.  Michael, thank you for joining us here today on our podcast.

MIKE KERLEY: Glad to be here, Andy.

HOST: First, Mike, can you tell us exactly what is Pay-Go?

MIKE KERLEY: Well Pay-Go is simply shorthand expression for “pay as you go.”  Every family practices pay as you go.  You bring in so much money; you pay out so much money.  And generally it’s not a good idea to exceed the amount of money that you bring in.  Well Congress operates somewhat on the same way and they have budget rules.  One of those budget rules is called pay as you go.  The Congress had allowed those rules to lapse a couple of years ago and unfortunately our budget deficits ballooned but when Congress reconvened this last January they restored the Pay-Go, or pay as you go budget rules, for this Congress. 

And I think the public can see if they’d been paying attention that in fact deficits have been going down.

HOST: Well that seems pretty straightforward but what role does this Pay-Go rule play in Congress’ operations?

MIKE KERLEY: Well I’ll tell you something.  It’s created a mad scramble for revenue offsets.  That’s really the biggest implications.  What that means is this.  If Congress wants to increase the funding for a particular program they have to find the revenue to do it.  Well there’s only two things you can do to get revenue to pay for that new program.  First, you can get it from some other program.  So you diminish a program.  Or you increase taxes, revenue in other words, to pay for that program. 

That has created a tremendous amount of pressure up in the Congress to find what they call “offsets” for new spending programs.  The Democrats that now control Congress do in fact have a different priority list than the Republicans who had controlled Congress for a number of years.  And each one of these initiatives is going to cost money.  And that’s where the pressure builds.

HOST: So now with this Pay-Go rule re-established what does this mean to our NAIFA members?

MIKE KERLEY: Uh, a big danger sign has gone up.  I mean, danger, danger, danger.  Um, most members of NAIFA don’t really focus on the fact that the products that they provide for their clients all come with really valuable tax incentives.  Life insurance inside buildup, life insurance death benefits, disability income nontaxable, health insurance benefits, retirement benefits in both annuities and qualified retirement plans.  All of these products and services that NAIFA members use to serve their clients have a tax component to it. 

That tax component adds up to about 1.5 trillion dollars.  That’s trillion dollars (!) worth of what I call sales incentives for the public to buy these products.  And the danger here is that Congress will look at those sales incentives and decided they’d rather scale back the ones that apply to insurance products and services and give them to something else.

HOST: So essentially stripping out all the sales incentives from the product?

MIKE KERLEY: That could happen.  And that’s where the danger is.  Senator, uh, Chairman Long used to sit at the head of the Senate Finance Committee every time it convened to look at ways to fund new government programs and he’d say, well the job here today folks is to carry out that old adage of don’t tax you, and don’t tax me, but tax the man behind the tree.  What we don’t want to be, ladies and gentlemen listening to this podcast, is the man behind the tree.

HOST: Can you give a present-day example of how the Pay-Go rule has impacted business of insurance agents and financial advisors?

MIKE KERLEY: Well, right off the bat when Congress came back in January one of the five items on the Democratic to-do list was to increase the minimum wage.  Sounds pretty simple, right?  Simply pass a law that increases the federal minimum wage.  But Pay-Go raises its ugly head, and so they say, oh, well, okay, we have to offset the cost of Pay-Go.  Where did they… what was the first thing they turned to?  They turned to scaling back the amount of income that people could put into deferred compensation plans. 

Now, the proposal that was put together was flawed from the get-go but the point is that’s the first place they went was to the deferred compensation aspect of our members business.  And so that should a produce a huge red flag over the NAIFA building to say we need to be on guard.  A second example is the state children’s health insurance program; a wonderful program to help disadvantaged children get health insurance.  And in fact NAIFA and its health insurance conference has actually supported that program. 

However, certain members of Congress want to expand the program to the point where it needs a considerable amount of additional income to pay for it.  And so they’ve looked around, the Congress has looked around for that revenue.  And first they found a lot of it in the tobacco, by increasing the tobacco tax, the increase on tobacco products.  Not a lot of sympathy there but they still needed a little more money so what did they do? 

They, at least the House, cut back on Medicare Advantage Programs that our members are selling to senior citizens.  And they’ve also added a $2.00 a person tax that employers must pay for each person for whom they have a health insurance plan.  Once again sets off all kinds of danger signals here and while those may not be the primary focus of NAIFA association members still it’s starting to get close to home.

 

HOST: Wow.  Well what about the future?  Are there threats to other products and services that our NAIFA members use to help clients achieve their financial goals?

 

MIKE KERLEY: Well as I said earlier a minute ago the products and services that our members provide amount to about 1.5 trillion dollars worth of non-taxed income and so what our fear obviously is that they will move from things like Medicare Advantaged which is important to a lot of our members but move to the mainstream which is life insurance, death benefits, inside buildup, disability income, long-term care insurance, and so on, annuities. And there are all kinds of ways at getting at those products. For example, with life insurance the Congress could decide to cap the amount of death benefit that an individual beneficiary would be allowed to have.  They could make loans under life insurance policies taxable instead of what they are now, not taxable.

HOST: Significant changes.

MIKE KERLEY: Significant changes to the products. You could also attack any insurance product offered by an insurance company, um, through something called a deferred acquisition tax which is a tax that’s actually applied at the corporate level but in fact is aimed at inside build-up of life insurance and annuities. There are all kinds of worry in the land or there should be at least.

HOST: Well what should NAIFA members be doing to make sure that Congress maintains the current tax benefits the industry products enjoy?

MIKE KERLEY: Just like any legislative threat members of the association must pay attention to what’s going on.  And the fact that members are listening to this podcast is evidence that our members are doing so.  So I congratulate them.  Second thing is they have to be willing to act.  For anybody who is skillful enough to download this podcast and listen to it you are skillful enough to respond to an action alert on the NAIFA website.

We have a legislative center on the NAIFA website and when we send out an action alert it directs you to go to that legislative action center and respond to that action alert.  These are just really simple, you know, if this were football it would be simple blocking and tackling.  I mean that is the, that is as simple as it gets in this business.  Third thing you could do is, members could do, is to talk to their legislators.  Explain the role of insurance products in transferring risks that individuals have.

The risk of dying too soon.  Living too long.  These are the risks that our industry takes on for the public.  At the same time it relieves the federal government and the state governments of the responsibility of doing so.  So I believe our members have a great story to tell legislators.  I think one other thing that we might want, members of our association might want to consider, and that is making certain that the middle class is well served. 

Statistics published by the life insurance marketing research association indicate that to some extent we are not serving the middle market.  Congress did not create these tax incentives to help rich people.  They created these tax incentives to help the middle class.  And if our industry is not serving the middle class then it once again opens us up to inspection.

HOST: Michael, thank you very much.  We really appreciate you being on our podcast today.  And I hope this explains a lot of this to everybody.

MIKE KERLEY: Glad to be here, Andy.  Thanks.

HOST: NAIFA encourages you to reach out to your legislators and discuss the limitations Pay-Go could have on the industry and your client’s financial future.  For more information on Pay-Go or how to contact your elected officials log on to 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.naifa.org/join.

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

Closing Music Plays.

The Importance of Life Insurance Awareness Month

Click on the above player to listen to the podcast.

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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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