By hiring agents and advisors from diverse backgrounds, you can grow your business, make more money, and find creative solutions. Studies show that diverse perspectives lead to better ideas and improve sales performance and innovation.

Read on to learn how a diverse workforce can benefit your business and clients alike.

Join us at NAIFA's Apex Sales Summit the week of August 15 to learn about a revolutionary new approach to life insurance with a special Learning Lab: "What Has Happened to Term Life Insurance? It's Called Longevity."

Longevity represents a new way of thinking about term life insurance. It combines the advantages of term life insurance with the flexibility to accommodate clients' changing needs.

Many webinars and courses for financial advisors regularly talk about how to attract new clients. And while this is logical, it made me think: Instead of looking for new clients, why don't financial advisors create meaningful relationships with their HNW client's adult children? So, when their parents retire, they choose to keep them as advisors instead of finding someone new.

But you'll be surprised to know the statistics regarding advisors doing this. I've been polling advisors, and I hear 15-20% when I ask them how many of their HNW clients' adult children they have a meaningful relationship with.

For the past few years, pundits have been predicting that bots, robo-advisors, and other technologies will lead to the demise of living, breathing financial professionals. That hasn’t happened yet, and, in my opinion, it never will. Yes, people can conduct much of their preliminary research online, and a few are willing to purchase basic coverage without ever speaking to a person. But most will want a financial professional to guide them through life’s twists and turns. Even those people who purchase coverage from a robo-advisor will seek the expertise of a financial professional as their needs become more complex. 

If you missed this year’s Advanced Practice Center Impact Week, don’t worry! We have everything you need to know on-demand. Check out our 10, one-hour sessions with industry experts, including: 

• Kathleen W. Bilderback on the effect of low-interest rates on acquisitions, third-party sales, management buy-outs, and family business succession 
• Stacey McMahan on comprehensive succession and exit planning 
• Scott McHenry and Andrew Rinn on the role of life insurance in a qualified retirement plan 
• Diane Boyle on NAIFA advocacy and topics of interest to NAIFA members 
• Howard Sharfman on ideas to grow your business at each stage of your career 
• Robert B. Wellendorf on life insurance in the business marketplace 
• Frank W. Seneco and R. Wesley Sierk on PPLIs and CICs 
• Steven J. Beatty on why business owners need life insurance 
• Daniel M. Zugell on trends and opportunities for the modern ESOP 
• Joel Solomon on the importance of consistency in your practice 

From the 1980s through the early 2000s, many advisors and brokers dreamed of having more help with critical yet time-consuming tasks like proof of insurance and minor claims processing. We mused, “If only I had help with those tasks, I could spend more time focusing on high-touch customer service and sales.”

Today, digital innovations are streamlining much of the way carriers and their representatives conduct and generate business. These innovations are precisely the help we wished for.

So why do many in our industry resist digital advances like customer self-service and apps?

In a tight recruiting economy, the pressure is on employers and their HR teams to hire the right people and engage them in their organizational culture.

Using personality tests in the workplace can often address both of these needs.