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Faces Unprecented Challenges at Critical Time
Robert Miller, M.S., M.A., of New York, one of the nation's most influential life insurance advisors and advocates, was installed last month as the 2011-12 president of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA).
 Miller, a partner in the firm of Miller-Pomeranz Financial of New York City, takes the helm of the nation's oldest and largest association of life insurance-based financial advisors at probably the most critical time in its 121-year history.
Miller faces unprecedented challenges related to:
* General economic uncertainty,
* Threats to the favored tax status afforded to life insurance products,
* Life insurance ownership being at an all-time low. . . and
* Obstacles to membership growth and retention.
NAIFA is in the forefront of efforts to protect nearly $1 trillion in so-called "tax expenditures" that provide tax-favored treatment of retirement and insurance products at a time when lawmakers are frantically seeking new "revenue raisers" to fill budget gaps and reduce the federal budget.
Of particular concern is protecting the cash buildup within annuities and life insurance from immediate taxation also, one of the biggest "tax expenditures" is the exclusion from taxable income of employer contributions to health insurance and retirement plans.
With life insurance ownership at a historic low, opportunity in the industry has nearly doubled since 2004, according to LIMRA, the industry's research organization. Life insurance sales could increase by $9.5 trillion if the 48 million households claiming to be underinsured purchased the coverage they said they neded, LIMRA said.
NAIFA membership growth and retention challenges have arisen from a decline in life insurance advisor population resulting from changes in insursance company marketing strategies, an aging population of life insurance-based advisors and the diversification of life insurance advisors into other fields of financial services.
But even with the decline in membership over the past decade, NAIFA remains the most potent lobbying force for the life insurance industry in Washington and the state capitols.
"In the midst of sweeping health care and financial reform, NAIFA's work to protect the interests of its members and their clients is indispensible," Miller said in a NAIFA press release.
He added: "In times of economic uncertainty, NAIFA members are more important than ever to the individuals and small businesses who look to them for guidance and security."
Miller is a past president of NAIFA-New York and NAIFA New York City, state and local affiliates. He has served on NAIFA's Board of Trustees since 2005 and on its Executive Committee since 2009.
"Robert is a results-oriented leader who has earned the respect and admiration of the NAIFA Federation," said outgoing president Terry Headley. "He possesses great insight and judgment and has always been able to make tough decisions and then make these decisions turn out right," Headley said.
Steve Jobs: impact on Financial Services
No ditigal publication can go without paying tribute to Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple who died last week at the age of 56.
Jobs pioneered the personal computer and other electronic products; then led a cultural transformation not only of business practices, but of music, movies and mobile communications.
Steve Jobs "touched an ugly world of tdchnology and made it beautiful," a twitter user wrote to the New York Times.
Tragically, the world will never know what would've come next, for death came in the most productive period of Jobs's career.
He had "a nearly unbroken string of innovative and wildly successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad that fundamentally changed the PC, electronics and digital media industries," said The Wall Street Journal.
"The way he marketed and sold those products through savvy advertising campaigns and its retail stores helped turn (Apple) into a pop culture," the Journal wrote.
Joel Bruckenstein, the high-tech guru who speaks frequently at Financial Planning Association (FPA) meetings, calls Jobs "the most influential innovator of our times.
"Apple never targeted a single product at the financial services sector, (yet) innovations pioneered by Jobs have changed the way advisors practice. Virtually every financial services firm has been altered in some way by the products Jobs developed," Bruckenstein wrote in Financial Planning Magazine's online version.
"Before Apple released the iphone, the vast majority of advisors had never used a smartphone (and) there has never been a new technology that advisors have taken to as quickly or with as much enthusiasm" as the iPad, Bruckenstein wrote.
Jobs's impact on the insurance industry is discussed by Pat Speer of Insurance Networking News.
"His vision created in consumers a desire to consider technology as a conduit to better living and, in so doing, inadvertently nudged the insurance industry beyond its reputation of being technology laggards and forced it to keep up -- to recognize and act on its customers' desires to keep computing simple," Speer wrote.
She added: "jobs's ability to simplify complex, highly engineered products (points up) the insurance industry's need to make coverage explainable (and) to rethink how technology can keep it simple for the policyholder."
Kanas vs. Capital One
NYC and Long Island financial advisors will remember John Kanas, the former CEO of North Fork Bancorp and one of the sharpest and well-connected bankers in the metropolitan area.
Five years ago Kanas sold North Fork to Capital One (What's in Your Wallet?) Financial for $13.2 billion and pocketed more than $200 million. He signed a noncompete agreement that he wouldn't compete against Capital One in New York until August of 2012. He then hibernated to Florida where he resumed his entrepreneurial quests in the banking business.
Now, with 10 months left in the noncompete pact, Kanas is back in New York. He agreed to buy a small Manhattan bank called Herald National and reportedly bid for Bank of Ireland's New York commercial banking portfolio. Then he posted job listings listings on Monster.com seeking senior banking staff in New York. Next, he reportedly secured a lease at 960 Sixth Ave., less than 600 feet from a Capital One branch, for his new bank.
All that was too much for Capital One. It filed a lawsuit claiming violation of the noncompete agreement and seeking an injunction along with return of the $24 million in stock Kanas got as part of the noncompete deal.
Kanas denied bidding for the Bank of Ireland assets and leasing space for retail branches. He insisted that he's "done nothing more than prepare to compete."
Stay tuned.
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