InsuranceNewsNet Magazine February 2012 : 50
pERspECTIvEs | WITH ROBERT MILLER Selling the Insurance Story An interview with Robert Miller, president of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. Robert Miller is midway through his tenure as president of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA) and has developed a reputation of being an outspoken, straight-shooting representative for the advisor community. He brings a different perspective to his position because his practice, Miller-Pomer-antz and Associates, is in lower Manhattan, where he advises Wall Street workers and other high-net-worth clients. But he is far from elitist in understanding and act-ing on the concerns of NAIFA’s members. Miller covered so much ground—and did it so well—that we have a much longer version of this interview online. INN: What do you see as the most significant issues for your members this year? MILLER: Everybody’s caught up in the debates over fiduciary responsibility. I tell people out in the field that, odds are, we’re all going to become fiduciaries in a way that’s going to allow our model to continue, because we’ve been telling our story and we differentiate ourselves from the traditional investment advisors. But in terms of the future, obvi-ously tax reform is lurking. And while nobody thinks Congress will get around to it until the fiscal end of 2012 or 2013, if we don’t set the groundwork for making them understand who we are and what our products do, we’re going to be in trouble. If all of a sudden you’re taxing the inside buildup and the death benefit, I think that’s going to significantly dam-age a lot of people who the Congress has no intention of damaging. point. When you go out to the hinter-lands around the country, they do have a sense that we’re crying wolf. AALU’s main focus has been on tax reform—and will always be on tax reform. When I go into the field, I don’t act hys-terical and I don’t say this is doomsday. I paint the picture that this is not a Repub-lican or a Democratic issue; it’s a national issue. No matter what your philosophi-cal way of looking at the country is, even Democrats will have to realize that you oversimplifying. But it works. So our job when we lobby is not to scream hysterically and say, “Oh my God, you can’t tax insurance products!” Our job is to build up a story, and it’s a com-pletely real story about who insurance agents are, what we do out in the coun-try and what the benefit of our products is to America. And I think that is a very significant story that they have to hear again and again and again. INN: What is that message? MILLER: That we’re relationship “Insurance products represent 20 percent of all savings” can only have so much debt before some-thing is going to have to be done about it. The insurance industry comprises more than a billion and a half dollars of what they call “tax expenditures,” which is essentially money that is pass-ing through without any tax revenue going to good old Uncle Sam. No Con-gress person that we’re talking to is say-ing that they’re definitively going to tax the insurance industry products. But on the other hand, when you have a bullseye that big on your back, you’d have to be foolish to think that they’re not going to take a hard look at you. To a degree, I’m INN: Certainly, a tax on the inside buildup and death benefit would be bad for the industry and the pub-lic. It is an alarm that has been rung each year, particularly by the Asso-ciation for Advanced Life Underwrit-ing (AALU). Why is it different now? MILLER: I am also a member of AALU, by the way. I think you’re making a good 50 InsuranceNewsNet Magazine February 2012 builders. We’re not a transac-tional business. I think if we ever became a transactional business, that would be the death knell of us— and that would come from something other than Congress. We bring in the dollars when the going is its toughest. We can’t replace the love of a lost family member and we can’t replace a significant partner in a small closely held business, but what we can do is bring in money that buys their future. Once legislators understand the signifi-cance of what we do and they realize that insurance products represent 20 percent of all savings in this country, Congress is set up to make intelligent choices. They can understand what potential unin-tended consequences would be if the rules were changed and families had to
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