Trust emerges as key battleground for distribution, LIMRA panel agrees

DALLAS -- The insurance industry is facing a distribution challenge as consumers gain unprecedented access to information while the advisor ranks continue to shrink, panelists agreed during a closing session Tuesday at the 2026 LIMRA Annual Conference.

That makes trust -- and the ability of advisors and insurers to establish and maintain it -- increasingly important to the future of insurance distribution, noted Alison Salka, principal consultant for LIMRA and LOMA, who moderated the session.

“Trust can be a competitive advantage. It's currency in the market,” she said, arguing that insurers and distributors must understand what builds trust, what breaks it and how trust can translate into stronger customer relationships and growth.

Salka was joined by Luke Cosme, senior vice president, U.S. life sales, marketing and operations for Pan-American Life Insurance Co., and John D. Stout, founder and president, J.D. Stout Consulting.

The need for trusted advice is growing as demographic, economic and technological changes reshape the market, Salka noted. Longer life expectancies mean consumers face longer retirements, greater concerns about outliving their assets and increasingly complicated financial needs.

At the same time, traditional life insurance sales triggers are changing as people marry later, have fewer children and increasingly live in single-person households.

“These are the typical points where you used to be able to sell life insurance,” Salka said. “There are less of them.”

Consumers are also showing greater interest in products that provide benefits during their lifetimes, including health, wellness and investment-related benefits.

Those changes are making long-term relationships more important, panelists agreed. Cosme added that service to the community is the answer to all of these challenges.

“Show me another profession where you can have a billion-dollar economic impact on your community. Just one person,” he said.

Greater need for context

Consumers also have access to vastly more financial information than they did a generation ago, panelists noted.

The internet and artificial intelligence have made it easier for consumers to research insurance and financial products before meeting with an advisor. But the abundance of information has also created a new problem: determining which information is accurate and relevant.

Advisers therefore are no longer expected to be simply the source of product information. Their value increasingly comes from helping consumers interpret information and apply it to their individual circumstances.

“Access to information is great, but the ability to sift through it, contextualize it, and use it to help make a decision that's going to make somebody comfortable,” Salka explained, “that's really where the value is, and that is where the future is.”

That creates an opportunity for advisors to challenge information consumers find online rather than simply accepting the premise of a customer's question.

“Just because something is on the internet, just because something came up in ChatGPT search does not make it right,” Cosme said.

That is an opportunity for the advisor to explain the sources behind information and help customers understand where online information may be incomplete or inaccurate, he added.

Customer experience raises the bar

Consumers are also bringing expectations shaped by companies such as Amazon, Costco and Marriott to their interactions with insurers and financial advisors, panelists acknowledged.

Expectations extend beyond the adviser to the insurance company itself. The advisor may be the face of the insurer, but customers ultimately judge the entire experience, including underwriting, policy administration and claims service.

“Everything that the company does is funneled through that advisor,” Stout said, adding that insurance companies can slip up in many ways. “So, it's more much more broad than just trusting the individual financial advisor. It's trust in the whole company, in the whole process.”

That includes making policies and other documents easier to understand, panelists said. Companies also need to understand the cultural and financial circumstances of the communities they serve and involve people who have experience in those markets, the panelists said.

Cosme suggested the industry could build trust by changing the metrics it emphasizes. Rather than focusing primarily on sales, commissions and revenue, insurers could track measures tied to relationships, trust and the broader impact of the business.

He cited an award program at OneAmerica that recognizes producers based on the amount of death benefit they put in force, framing the measure around the impact those producers have in their communities.

“Yes, people need to make money in this business, but at the end of the day, that's the impact that the agent is going to have,” he said.

Cosme said the approach gives advisers another way to think about the value of their work beyond commissions.

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