Within the last decade, the industry has striven to make e-delivery the standard. Protective Life began offering it in 2008, with most other insurers quickly following suit. But customers and demanding more efficiency and services all the time. Here are a few tips to improve e-delivery.

When we begin new projects and work with new experts, we can easily make the mistake of assuming how things will work. We assume that a new partner will tell us everything we need to know up front, but that’s usually not how the dynamic will play out. What can we learn as advisors?

The appraisal of remaining term insurance as potential life settlement opportunities is an emerging trend. Concurrently, many of the agents who could have life settlement opportunities are unaware of life settlement due to a lack of education from their upline.

U.S. life insurance application activity slowed down in March, largely because young people did not buy. Overall activity fell 4.9% year over year, according to the MIB Life Index. Part of the decline is attributable to March 2018 being such a good month, MIB explained.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners voted last week to form a task force focused on LTCi market stability. Its most significant, and most controversial, charge is to harmonize rate review processes across state lines. Many insurers continue to seek large LTCi rate hikes.

A disability insurance provider released the results of a study that showed employee absence and disability are costing companies an average of $800,000 a year.

Just one-third (31 percent) of middle-income baby boomers feel well prepared for retirement. That makes this year’s National Retirement Planning Week, which began April 8, the perfect time for agents everywhere to reassess their approach to retirement planning with their clients.

Judge Denise J. Casper ruled that an addendum to the Ohio National selling agreement commits them to arbitration with Commonwealth Equity Services. The broker-dealer is challenging Ohio National’s decision to end trail commissions on a specific variable annuity.

Overall annuity sales rose 9.7 percent in 2018, with the combined sales of fixed and variable annuities reaching $218 billion, according to the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI), citing final 2018 market data for the U.S. annuity industry from Beacon Research and Morningstar.

Nearly half of single parents with children under age 18 don’t have life insurance, and the majority of them say the reason they don’t have coverage is because they believe it’s too expensive, a survey said.

While the Department of Labor fiduciary rule is gone, tossed out by a federal appeals court one year ago, the compliance spotlight it shone on commission annuity sales remains. If the industry doesn’t figure out how to effectively provide distribution of annuities via advisory channels, “sales are just going to fall off a cliff,” one executive says.

The rising cost of living and cost of education has changed the financial landscape for millennials. But there’s more for advisors to understand when it comes to millennials and financial fragility.

The annuity sales landscape changed in a major way in 2018. Sales rebounded strongly in virtually every product line, in some cases 40 to 50 percent year-over-year. Fixed annuities led the way.

In an era when pensions are as old-fashioned as plaid bell bottoms, four in 10 boomers have less than $100,000 saved for retirement; one quarter has less than $25,000, according to LIMRA. With 10,000 boomers hitting 65 every day, it is a mystery who will feed them once they are past 64.

Al Bundy would not be a good life insurance prospect, but Jay Pritchett would be a warm one. The two iconic television characters played by actor Ed O’Neill represent the hot and cold of prospecting, said Vikram Kamath, director of the LIMRA Center of Excellence for Analytics.

One trend the industry is falling short on is customer engagement.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has been very deliberate with its Regulation Best Interest, which was tentatively adopted last April.Since then, not a lot has happened as the SEC collects comments and tinkers with the rule behind closed doors. But there may be a method to their madness, said Carl Wilkerson, vice president and chief counsel, securities, for the American Council of Life Insurers.