LIMRA members confront ‘overwhelming’ change, CEO says

The LIMRA 2023 Annual Conference sold out long before the doors opened at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor.

Nearly 1,000 executives and other key leaders in the financial services community are gathering for the three-day event. The state of the industry dictates a constant drive for innovation in search of solutions, said LIMRA CEO Dave Levenson.

Regulation is becoming more intense. Artificial intelligence and big data technology carry potential and dangers of misuse. These things, and other disruptions, are playing out during a difficult economy that threatens to fall into a recession.

"It's just the intensity of all this change at the same time," Levenson explained. "And it's overwhelming."

He broke down four areas that LIMRA aims to help its members adapt and survive:

1. More training. The industry workforce is evolving, Levenson noted, with a new generation of employees, the result of intense recruiting efforts.

Those new employees are in need of training to get up to speed and LIMRA/LOMA is trying to fill that need, Levenson explained. "We've taken our professional development offering and we've evolved it to support that environment," he added.

LIMRA and LOMA created Complete Insurance Fundamentals, which Levenson described as a 15- to 18-hour "crash course" on the industry.

"Given that a third of employees are new, and many of whom are new to the industry, something like that just feels like it hits the mark for our members," Levenson said.

On Jan. 1, LIMRA and LOMA will launch "Industry Advantage," a video library of 200 short courses, each of which are 15 to 20 minutes. Levenson compared the concept to a LinkedIn Learning for the insurance industry.

Thirdly, LIMRA and LOMA continues its leadership program in partnership with the Wharton School. Each year, 100 "high potential" executives join a cohort for what is a three-year program.

"It really is a program geared toward the insurance industry and helps high-potential leaders think strategically," Levenson said. "We just launched our second cohort. We have capacity for 100 executives in each cohort and the demand has been so great that we had to limit the number of people per company to two."

2. Timely studies. With the insurance industry undergoing a lot of transition, LIMRA and LOMA is launching several new studies to give members fresh insights.

Earlier this year, LIMRA began a payout annuity mortality study and a fixed indexed annuity policyholder behavior study. This fall, the organization will launch a universal life persistency premium persistency and lapse in surrender steady.

LIMRA and LOMA is partnering with organization like the Society of Actuaries and consultants such as McKinsey & Co. for some efforts.

3. Emerging committees. LIMRA and LOMA hosts 120 committees, Levenson said, some of which have been around "for 100 years." But the organization still sees opportunities to add committees where issues need discussion among peers.

"One area that we're very focused on right now is to add a committee, and we're in the process of developing it, in the space of artificial intelligence," Levenson said. "When you think about the governance. When you think about the case studies. When you think about the challenges and opportunities, everybody wants to hear from their peers. How they're how they're approaching it, because it's so new, and how are they approaching it specifically within our industry."

4. FraudShare. To address the increase in cybercrime, LIMRA developed the FraudShare detection system for insurance and retirement companies in 2019 and three years later, expanded capabilities in partnership with Verisk, a leading global data analytics company.

The next step is to evolve the entire FraudShare platform, Levenson explained, to what LIMRA is calling FraudShare: The Next Generation.

"Moving to kind of real-time scoring, as to whether or not a policy is a fraud risk or not a fraud risk," Levenson said. "That's an example of taking an existing solution and evolving it for the complexities of the marketplace."

LIMRA and LOMA is also further developing its longstanding Customer Assurance Program, which will likely grow in importance as tougher sales standards are adopted. It will allow the organization, on behalf of members, "to survey customers to really make sure they understand what they bought," Levenson said.

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Editor John Hilton covered business and other beats in more than 20 years of daily journalism. John may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @INNJohnH.

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