2021 LIMRA Virtual Annual Conference

The effective use of data and analytics is becoming increasingly vital for success in the financial services industry. But there are also inherent risks to deploying analytics solutions. In this session, we will share some of the best practices that life and retirement companies are following to grow and operate their analytics teams, and highlight some of the valuable applications they have developed. We will also discuss what analytics organizations are doing to meet their ethical obligations, maintain sound methodology, and minimize their risks.

Advisors and employers are ramping up their financial wellness offerings to improve the financial health and well-being of their clients and employees. Today’s environment provides a unique opportunity to help people take control of their finances with tools to reduce debt, save more and have more peace of mind. This session will focus on innovation in wellness programs and how they are evolving. What's driving innovation and what are the emerging trends? And what actually works? What have we learned from businesses that orient their products and services around a financial health objective? Join experts from the Financial Health Network, a national nonprofit whose mission is to improve financial health, in a discussion that will provide insight to improving outcomes for individuals, employees, and communities. 

Talent makes all the difference in the survivability of any business. Facing a tight pandemic economy, we all have a responsibility to cultivate talent as a focus of our business approaches. Talent plays directly into the ways a company responds to challenges and emergencies such as the coronavirus pandemic, especially as we look to the future. This session brings to light new ways of thinking about talent in an environment that encompasses everything from full remote, to fully in an office, to a hybrid model to ensure our successes with talent for the future.

Emerging from the pandemic, the insurance sector is looking fundamentally different: much more agile, secure, connected and digitally-enabled. The key is to stay the course and sustain the pace of this transformation. COVID-19 has been the catalyst for innovation in insurance, unlocking greater levels of customer experience and personalization along with providing the industry with a digital wake-up call. This executive panel will discuss what we have learned as an industry and how we can be better prepared for the next pandemic.

The ways in which companies adapted when faced by COVID-19 directly affected the customer experience. As the pursuit of an optimized experience continues to be a strategic driver for carriers, there is great interest in understanding the long-term status of the changes applied. In this panel discussion, industry leaders will reflect on the efficacy of efforts to address the customer experience in the midst of the pandemic and discuss their perspectives on directions the CX journey is likely to take as we move to the future.

Over the last decade, digitalization has been touted as the much-needed change the insurance industry needs to jump the curve.  Nearly overnight, the pandemic created intense pressure to accelerate that change for distribution channels, and especially pushed hard those executives who are still dealing with traditional processes.  The lessons learned in facing these challenges lay the groundwork for a more innovative, digital future for the industry.

The war for talent continues to intensify.  Increasingly, employers are using a robust and modern benefits package as a competitive differentiator.  As such, the workplace benefits market represents a growing opportunity and an area of intense competition for carriers, where experience, products, services, and technology can provide competitive advantage. However, traditional sales and service models are under pressure. Increasing complexity, an evolving ecosystem, intense competition in the third-party landscape, changing employee needs, a complex regulatory environment and digital transformation all confront organizations looking to succeed in this market. Based on new research conducted by EY and LIMRA, this workshop will examine the rapidly changing dynamics of the workplace benefits landscape and explore how carriers must adapt to harness profitable growth in this market.

Learn how the increase in familial and 3^rd party imposter fraud coupled with the move to a more digital product and service offering has created an opportunity.  Smart companies have not just implemented additional controls and procedures, instead they reimagined how they could better service the customer safely and securely.   When done right companies can enhance the customer experience, offer increased servicing capabilities, reduce cost and prevent fraud.

This session will present a pragmatic look at digital trends and technologies that are likely to prove as disruptors or enablers in the next three to five years. We will recap our journey through the COVID-19 pandemic, how the pandemic proved disruptive to the digital disruption that was already underway. The session will present a path forward on where our industry goes from here and what we need to do to prepare and ultimately win this digital age.

Uncharted seas lie ahead when it comes to the DOL Fiduciary Rule. Carriers, broker-dealers, and investment advisors utilizing PTE 2020-02 are dealing with a heavy compliance burden given the deadline of December 20, 2021. And — with a potential rewrite of the Rule on the DOL’s agenda for 2022 — more changes are on the horizon. In this session, experts and industry leaders will share their thoughts on what to expect in 2022, and areas for companies to consider as they proactively respond to the coming compliance storm.

The $2 trillion-a-year retirement income market opportunity is enormous, with opportunities for retail and workplace-based income products and services. Yet income-focused annuity product sales have been declining, and in-plan solutions have seen limited success. Can the industry turn around this trend? At this session, industry leaders will share their perspectives on the strategic considerations for companies that are setting the course for the future of retirement income.

What is keeping you and your peers awake at night? LIMRA and Boston Consulting Group surveyed hundreds of C-suite and executive-level leaders around the globe to find out. Come hear what the industry collectively has said. Validate, strengthen, and enlighten your strategies.

The traditional insurance distribution model is under pressure from both external and internal forces. Non-traditional competitors, expense pressures, and advances in technology contribute to the strain. Digital adoption and advances in underwriting – changes that have long been on the horizon – accelerated during the pandemic, and are helping us to reach underserved communities. At the same time, sales teams are grappling with engaging clients in the “new normal” and striving to make sense of the rapidly changing landscape. Those that keep up with the pace of this transformation and take advantage of the opportunities presented are likely to be the winners. With this as a backdrop, we will examine the drivers of these changes, and what they will mean for your business in the near future.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the pace and scale of many innovations, including life insurance underwriting and risk selection. This innovation in underwriting, including accessing clinical medical data in new ways, using non-traditional data sources, and accelerating the pace of underwriting decisions through predictive models, may help our industry close the protection gap, but also comes with a multitude of questions and misunderstandings. 

Will this new selection paradigm protect your company’s balance sheet? How can we ensure our predictive models do not cause harm from a societal perspective? Our panel of experts will candidly discuss these questions and others so we can help start clearing the confusion as we move forward in to the future of underwriting.

Investments in diversity, equity and inclusion are on the rise. The events of 2020 created even greater interest in measuring results, breakthrough progress, and drafting scenarios of what the "next normal" may look like. Leaders responsible to drive and measure DEI results will discuss the opportunities and challenges that accompany breakthrough results, and how these are evolving as awareness and commitment increases.  Join the conversation to hear more about employee engagement, recruiting and retention, and how fully remote and hybrid workforces impact DEI work.