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The LIC Bullet
Straight to the point!
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August 2025
Back To School
By Dean Lambert
Executive Director, LIC
Speaking with our members over the past few weeks, many have either seen the start of the school year or are readying their students to return to school. It's a 12 plus-year ritual starting with typical anxiety when the kids are young and, in later years, an eagerness for middle-aged parents to reclaim their homes from messy young adults.
The central importance of this time of year is a return to learning. I'd like to suggest that this concept is not just for "school-aged" people; rather, that we might all consider ourselves lifelong learners. ...
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Industry News
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Scaling the 21st-Century Leadership Factory
CEOs and their teams should be laser focused on developing next-generation leaders with the unique skills and capabilities to perform and thrive in challenging times. Here is a playbook for doing that.
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LIMRA Annual Conference Coming in September
LIC members qualify for member rates at the LIMRA Annual Conference September 14-16, 2025 in Kissimmee, FL. Known for top-tier keynote speakers and thought leadership, The LIMRA Annual Conference offers strategic insights and high-level networking for industry leaders - a must-attend for executives.
LIC members: Join Dean and Audrey for a special VIP welcome at the opening reception on Sunday! Email lic@loma.org to RSVP.
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How Agentic AI Can Transform Industries by 2028
A recent EY article details how agentic AI is revolutionizing the future of industries by automating tasks, boosting adaptability, and minimizing reliance on human oversight.
More AI Headlines:
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BetterLife Launches Better Final Expense Insurance
BetterLife - a member-owned, not-for-profit life insurance company - has launched Better Final Expense, an updated line of final expense products designed for a more streamlined approach to coverage.
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Justine Bell Joins Homesteaders as Chief Human Resources Officer
Homesteaders Life Company has named Justine Bell as the company's new Chief Human Resources Officer. She succeeds Tonja Clark, who retired as Homesteaders SVP-Human Resources.
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NGL to Restructure as a Mutual Holding Company
National Guardian Life Insurance Company's leadership team and Board of Directors approved a proposal to restructure NGL into a mutual holding company. If all approvals are obtained, the proposed reorganization is expected to become effective on January 1, 2026.
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5Star Life Appoints John D. Naum CFO
5Star Life Insurance Company announced the appointment of John D. Naum as its Chief Financial Officer, effective July 21, 2025, following the retirement of previous CFO Kimberley Wooding.
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Wellabe Introduces Customizable Critical Illness Insurance in 14 States
Wellabe has launched a new Critical Illness insurance product in 14 states to protect the well-being of customers when they suffer from cancer, heart attack, stroke, or other critical illnesses. Underwritten by Medico® Insurance Company, Wellabe's Critical Illness insurance provides customizable coverage for individuals, couples, and families that pays a lump-sum cash benefit.
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AFBA Appoints New CFO Joseph P. Stangl
Armed Forces Benefit Association announced the appointment of Joseph P. Stangl as Chief Financial Officer, effective August 11, 2025.
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Zinnia Announces Major Cloud Migration Milestone to Support Processing of Over 55% of Digital Annuity Sales in U.S.
Zinnia, a leading life and annuity insurance technology company, today announced a significant technology milestone: the migration of Zinnia's core order entry solution, AnnuityNet, to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Zinnia processes over 55% of annuities submitted by the bank and broker-dealer community in the U.S., now running on AWS infrastructure.
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Americo Life Acquires Ozark National Life
On May 30, 2025, Ozark became a wholly owned subsidiary of Americo Financial Life and Annuity Insurance Company, which is wholly owned by Americo Life, Inc.
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Royal Neighbors Launches New Single-Premium Whole Life Product
On June 27, 2025, Royal Neighbors of America announced the launch of its new Jet Single Premium Whole Life (SPWL) product (Form Series 241812). Designed with application simplicity and community impact in mind, Jet SPWL helps members protect their legacy with a one-time premium payment and a simplified application process.
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Gallagher Study Reveals Employers Investing in Holistic Wellbeing for Future Growth
Gallagher's 2025 U.S. Benefits Benchmarks Report highlights a growing trend among employers to adopt holistic approaches that encompass physical, emotional, career and financial health.
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This year's LIC Preneed Forum will be held November 5-6, 2025, hosted by Pekin Insurance in Pekin, IL. The program features keynote presenter Peter Shankman, who is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about the customer experience, social media, PR, marketing, advertising, and the Neurodiverse Economy. Other highlights include preneed and funeral home market updates, business intelligence data from Obitdata, preneed case study, preneed policyowner motivators, and highlights from this year's LIMRA/LIC Preneed Survey Report.
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TruStage Launches Annuity Offering Two Strategies for Down Markets
On June 24, 2025, TruStage announced the launch of a new retirement solution, the TruStage ZoneChoice Advantage Annuity, underwritten by MEMBERS Life Insurance Company, a registered index-linked annuity (RILA) with new, innovative crediting strategies for end-investors. Two new crediting strategies give clients the possibility of achieving positive returns in down markets.
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Milliman Offers Key Considerations for VM-22 Readiness
In July 2025, Milliman issued the first of a two-part whitepaper series, highlighting key considerations for insurers preparing for VM-22, the upcoming principle-based reserving statutory framework for non-variable annuities.
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SHRM Report Warns of Widening Skills Gap as AI Adoption Reaches Nearly Half of U.S. Workforce
SHRM, the trusted authority on all things work, workers, and the workplace, released new findings on the growing role of artificial intelligence in the modern workplace. The new report emphasizes the critical role of human oversight and underscores the importance of upskilling and reskilling employees to harness AI's full potential.
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Upcoming LIC Events
LIC Member Companies: Prepay for two or more events and save! Sign up for bundle pricing at www.loma.org/LICSAVE.
Equisoft/LIC Webinar: How CX Technology Transforms Small and Mid-Sized Life Insurance Carriers
August 20, 2025, 12 p.m. ET
LIC Summer CEO Forum (reserved for insurance company CEOs/Presidents)
Sonoma, CA
August 26–28, 2025
LIC ERM Committee Meeting
Hosted by Security National Life, Salt Lake City
September 23–24, 2025
LIC Operations Committee Meeting
Hosted by Security National Life, Salt Lake City
September 24–25, 2025
LIC HR Committee Meeting
Hosted by Homesteaders, Des Moines, IA
October 1–2, 2025
LIC Annuity Committee Conference Call
October 17, 2025, 2–3:30 p.m. ET
LIC Investment & Capital Management Committee Meeting
Hosted by Optimum Life Re, Dallas
October 22–23, 2025
LIC Preneed Forum
Hosted by Pekin Insurance, Pekin, IL
November 5–6, 2025
LIC Laws & Legislation Committee Conference Call
November 7, 2025, 2–3:30 p.m. ET
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LIC 2025 Premier Sponsors
Thank you to our LIC Premier Sponsors, who support all of LIC's activities throughout the year.
Parkway Advisors is focused on being the best and most respected provider of service in the insurance industry. Parkway offers asset management, consulting, and statutory investment reporting services that are customized to the needs of each insurance client. Through Parkway's emphasis on personal service, custom solutions, and strong communication, our clients have enjoyed historically strong performance success, especially during the financial crisis and the low interest environment that has followed. www.parkwayadvisors.com
iPipeline is a leading provider of low code, cloud-based software solutions for the life insurance and financial services industry. Through our SSG Digital, end-to-end platform, we provide process automation and seamless integration between every participant in our ecosystem including carriers, agents, general agencies, advisors, broker-dealers, RIAs, banks, securities/mutual fund firms, and their consumers on a global basis. Our innovative solutions include pre-sales support, new business and underwriting, policy administration, point-of-sale execution of applications, post-sale support, data analysis, reporting, user-driven configuration, consumer delivery and self-service, and agency and firm management. www.ipipeline.com
Equisoft is a business-first technology company dedicated to helping insurance and wealth management organizations reach their goals. Specialized expertise: Over 25 years of experience helping small and mid-sized life insurers & fraternals solve their biggest challenges through digital transformation. www.equisoft.com
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About The LIC Bullet
The Bullet is the official e-newsletter of the Life Insurers Council, which has been providing networking and practical business solutions for life insurers since 1910. As a council of LIMRA and LOMA, LIC serves the unique needs of small to midsize member companies, offering a personal network of peers with practical solutions to shared challenges. The Bullet delivers immediate and relevant industry news and editorial.
LIC E-News Online Community: The LIC Bullet is posted in the LIC E-News online community at LICConnect, where we welcome dialogue and input from our readers. All Bullet subscribers have access to this forum, and others can request access by contacting lic@loma.org.
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Feature Editorial (Full Text)
Back To School
By Dean Lambert, Executive Director, LIC
Speaking with our members over the past few weeks, many have either seen the start of the school year or are readying their students to return to school. It's a 12 plus-year ritual starting with typical anxiety when the kids are young and, in later years, an eagerness for middle-aged parents to reclaim their homes from messy young adults.
The central importance of this time of year is a return to learning. I'd like to suggest that this concept is not just for "school-aged" people; rather, that we might all consider ourselves lifelong learners. That makes this time of year an ideal time to remember that continuous professional development is a vital part of employee and company success. While we may seek to employ the most accomplished individuals, aren't we are only "accomplished" to the present moment?
Other professions use the word "practice" to define their work, appropriately so. For example, physicians and attorneys constantly encounter new situations and problems to solve. Despite all the knowledge, training and available reference material that helps meet these challenges, we often face unprecedented situations and turn to instinct to create solutions. This adds to our personal - and the collective - knowledge base for future reference.
Thus, even with the vast knowledge in our world and the ability to easily access it, there is so much opportunity to learn and grow! Yet, we make many excuses to put aside educational development. Why do we not prioritize learning? What are the types of learning to consider? Let's dive in.
Educational Development vs. Training
How is educational development different from training? Do you distinguish between the two? While similar, training is short-term and focused on specific skills necessary for a particular job or task. This is important, and we should not minimize its value to our employees.
Educational development is a broader and longer-term commitment to the growth and improvement of an individual that achieves several benefits. One could argue that the word "development" might be sufficient without the modifier. Educational development implies a form of curriculum is involved as opposed to something we will cover later in the article: learning by experience.
Regardless of the semantics, training and development offer many benefits to achieving success. What can you add to the chart below?
| Benefit to Organization |
Benefit to Individual |
| Culture of continuous improvement |
Personal and professional growth |
| Employee retention |
Motivation to remain at company |
| Identification of future leaders |
Potential for job advancement |
| Increased innovation |
Inspiration to innovate |
| Enhanced productivity |
Improved performance in position |
| Reward and recognition opportunity |
Recognition and reward for learning |
| Expands employee benefit offering |
Tuition-free education |
| Potentially reduces external leader search |
Stokes aspiration for higher leadership |
Educational development and training are certainly primary areas of responsibility for most human resource leaders, but department heads, managers and supervisors should be staunch advocates for developing their team members. Even if the skills and knowledge gained may inspire someone to seek another position within the organization, this is preferable to losing a good culture and talent fit to another company.
Executive teams, leaders at any level, and boards of directors should vigorously support building, maintaining, and growing deep and broad educational development programs. This is crucial to maintaining a competitive advantage in the ongoing pursuit of profitable, long-term success.
"I have a veteran workforce; we don't need training and development."
As a lifelong learner, it is difficult for me to hear this. Not all your employees are curious or will voluntarily seek education opportunities, especially more tenured staff. Some team members will have advanced due to time in position, having acquired enough functional knowledge and experience to become "senior" in their occupational area.
The danger for leaders is assuming this is all that a person desires in a job. The pay bumps and title adjustments may recognize certain position mastery, but we must encourage/inspire our employees to expand their understanding of their roles within the greater enterprise. This is important for more reasons than the employee retention and supposed stability it brings.
Any good enterprise risk management plan should account for mitigation of staffing issues, such as long-term injury or illness, retirement, malfeasance – all the "in case of…" scenarios. Business interruption due to staffing is one of the easiest problems to solve if you have a focus on both training and educational development. Let's suppose a supervisor or department manager leaves the organization. Are any of the team members capable of stepping in? You may have an experienced, veteran team of people who understand your processes and tools, and possess vast situational knowledge. But can one of them step into a leadership role and the responsibilities that come with it – including filling the capacity need caused by their own advancement?
What else comes to mind when considering the need to broaden the knowledge and experience of staff to accommodate unexpected business needs?
How about Succession?
During the LIC Summer CEO Forum in late August, we are fortunate to enjoy a session led by veteran life insurance CEO Steve Lang, who now consults on strategic planning and executive staffing. He will address LIC member CEOs on the topic of succession planning. Spoiler alert -- Steve will quote William Rothwell, author of Effective Succession Planning (©2010, Amacom Books), who defines succession planning using words that 100 percent support the importance of ongoing educational development.
Succession planning is "any effort designed to ensure the continued effective performance of any organization, division, department, or work group by making provision for the development, replacement, and strategic application of key people over time."
As it relates to succession planning, Lang believes a well-organized educational development program should include allowing young professionals to rotate assignments early in their careers. In fact, he is a product of this discipline. He often tells the story of how Fred Rockwood, the founding CEO of Forethought Life Insurance Company, moved Steve out of his HR role into operations management. This was a journey to help Rockwood identify a potential executive leader while helping Steve develop and gain confidence in management skills that eventually led to him becoming CEO of Forethought (now Global Atlantic, which issues around $1 billion in preneed annuities annually).
Having worked under Steve, my impression is that "development" is a core leadership value he tries to inculcate into the minds of his corporate clientele. As mentioned earlier in this article, "education" is a perhaps unimportant modifier that evokes formal programming as opposed to experiential learning. Do you agree?
Does employee retention correlate to company stability?
The answer to this question depends on the breadth of a CEO's (and by default the leadership team's) definition of "company stability." What is the net effect of the investment in recruiting, hiring, onboarding, managing, and retaining employees considering your organization's turnover rate not including retirements? This is the opportunity cost in not having a robust educational development program in addition to efficient and effective ongoing staff training.
According to Carie Crane, LIMRA-LOMA's vice president-professional development, "Employees want to remain with employers that demonstrate investment in their workforce through learning opportunities and actively help employees become more successful in their careers."
For leadership teams faced with unpredictable headwinds such as the economic environment, geopolitical instability, and natural disasters, investing in employee development from a change management perspective seems like a good bet. The ROI is realized in both the current and future state of an enterprise, retaining top talent in the near-term and providing a means to identify and develop future leadership. Finally, continuous learning can indeed provide both stability and continuity for your organization.
Tips for Successful Educational Development Participation
Prioritizing learning and development help organizations to enhance productivity and build a loyal and capable workforce ready to meet future demands. However, simply offering education does not mean it will translate into the desired benefits.
Requiring busy employees to take courses and reserve time for personal or leadership development will no doubt induce a chorus of groans and eyerolls from your associates. I know how I feel when I click that fateful phishing test and am assigned security training, regardless of how easy it is to complete and its obvious value to me personally.
Here are several tips to gain enthusiastic consumption of your company's educational development offerings:
- Model the way: Demonstrate lifelong learning by communicating when leaders participate in courses, workshops, seminars, earn certificates or advanced degrees. Capture and distribute short videos of your leaders telling what inspired them to seek the knowledge and how they will put it to use professionally and personally.
- Communicate availability: Too often we expect employees to know and remember their benefits. While many in the job market avow the importance of education and development from their employer, they may not place a monetary value as they do with other benefits such as healthcare coverage, a parking space, or a gym membership. Report on the value of your education program not only in terms of cost per employee, but also in terms of potential advancement. When you add or modify programs our course work, make it an engagement opportunity by highlighting it in your employee education and via all your communication channels.
- Create a recognition and reward program: A meaningful and high-profile celebration of achievement supports a culture of learning and development in your organization. Some human resource management platforms such as Paylocity, Rippling, and ADP Workforce Now, offer modules that accommodate employee recognition and education tracking. Host an annual education recognition luncheon for all employees who complete some form of education program internally or externally. Use your social media channels to recognize employees for their education achievements.
- Develop tangible career advancement paths: View advancement steps as degree achievements. LOMA designations are a fitting example of segmenting learning and development requirements for stepstones toward career growth. Smaller companies may not support "title" changes aside from "junior- or "senior-," making certain that your education program adds to the employee's ability to contribute more significantly to the organization's success justifies providing compensation commensurate with added responsibility. Most organizations regardless of current size can implement some form of leadership or executive development program. In fact, if you do not have one because you believe your company is too small, you might review your strategic plan to ensure your vision includes the type of growth that will require developing and acquiring talent to support it.
- Listen to the voice of your customers/stakeholders: Take this in every way you feel necessary to inspire a deep and wide educational development program in your organization. Your employees and job market studies may provide some insights on personnel demands for skill enhancement and personal growth. What other stakeholders might influence your educational programming? How about policyowners and people like them who might be best-fit consumers of your products? How do they expect to be treated by customer-facing teams? What do they expect of company leaders in terms of corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and long-term mindset? Do consumers have a say in how they access your products, services, and support? How might this influence technology training such as digital customer journeys and marketing?
Conclusion
A committed approach to development and training is vital to the type of business agility required to compete and succeed in business, and there is no shortage of new things to learn. Let's make "back to school" something we think about more than just once a year.
I invite your thoughts and comments. Please email me at dlambert@limra.com or feel free to start a conversation in LIC Connect.
Dean Lambert, Executive Director, LIC
PLEASE NOTE NEW PHONE NUMBER: (475) 372-5298 (mobile)
dlambert@limra.com
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