Skip to content

Spotlight On: Brent Korte, SVP – CMO, Ameritas

Spotlight On:
Brent Korte, SVP – CMO, Ameritas

As a new feature, MarketFacts is spotlighting leaders of LIMRA and LOMA member companies.

March 2025

Q: Can you share the journey that led you to your current position?

Over 30 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work in almost every aspect of the financial services industry. My journey began in banking with Washington Mutual, followed by roles at asset management firms including BlackRock, T. Rowe Price and Principal. I also gained valuable experience with broker-dealers like LPL, and now work in the insurance sector with Ameritas. My journey has included stints in corporate strategy, product management, mergers and acquisitions, and marketing. This diverse background gave me the ability to understand different markets and sectors of our industry, which has served me well as the chief marketing officer (CMO) for Ameritas for almost 10 years.

Q: How does your team ensure that your company’s strategic goals align with your company’s day-to-day operations?

Our team is very focused on aligning marketing strategies with both enterprise and business line objectives. Extensive and ongoing collaborative planning ensures that we allocate our resources effectively. This approach has allowed our teams to create an environment of trust with our partners across the organization and has built a shared mindset of winning together.

Q: How do you balance short-term operational goals with long-term strategic objectives?

Executing our plans and running an efficient operation not only help us in the short-term, but they also allow us to look ahead across different time horizons as to what our businesses and the enterprise need to build for the future. We continuously look toward what we believe are both durable and emerging trends that we need to account for and then start building capabilities to address them. As a mutual-based organization, Ameritas is positioned to look further into the future while still executing on the plans we align around today. Our executive team spends significant time together checking on our progress while discussing, debating and then aligning on plans for longer-term strategies.

Q: How do you see AI and generative AI reshaping strategic objectives and business operations in your company?

Generative AI is going to touch every part of our operation. In many cases, it will offer us efficiencies that, to date, we have not been fully able to realize. We will have the opportunity to develop the capabilities of our associates as some of their day-to-day tasks are completed for them. In the marketing area, we have established working groups to take on use cases and pilots that can be woven into the everyday workflow. Everyone in our organization has objectives in their annual goals around the use of generative AI tools. Today, we use tools for content generation, text-to-voice functionality, graphic generation and workflow optimization. Our work now is to determine the right level of investment in the right platforms and tools to increase our capacity, effectiveness and impact. I believe we will be able to get to hyper-personalization of content and campaigns based on expressed behaviors and automated triggers from engagement analytics. This technology will change the skill sets we need, so we are actively working with our associates to build some of these skills, and I’m working with the University of Nebraska–Lincoln to ensure that the curriculum takes into account the changing landscape these graduates will face when they move into the workforce.

Q: How would you describe your leadership style, and how does it influence your team’s/organization’s culture?

I have always loved coaching and have been lucky enough to have coached teams since I was in high school. There are similarities in coaching both athletics and corporate teams. You expect high performance, and you train and develop people based on their strengths and put them into units that can succeed and win as a team. I’m a firm believer that we cannot move a company forward by ourselves. We need to train and develop our talent, put them in positions to succeed, and then get out of their way so they can own their outcomes and win. Things don’t always go well, but I believe part of my job is to help people learn, understand, take some risks and get back out there. I am very fortunate to have passionate leaders and fantastic teams who want to win together and celebrate each other’s success.

Q: What initiatives has your team undertaken to improve customer experience and engagement?

One of our current initiatives involves looking at every piece of correspondence and every communication point with our customers from an experience perspective. Much of the objective is to move as much to digital as we can. We are reimagining all the system-generated emails and letters, policy packets, ID cards, notifications — everything. We’re even tackling our interactive voice response (IVR) systems, rewriting on-hold scripts and reviewing the music customers hear. This project is helping prioritize a lot of our self-service road maps across all our digital channels. It is a monumental task when you think about all the old systems and the disparate sources of data. The team feels like they are making tremendous headway, but there is so much more to do. We approach each piece from the customer’s point of view, and then we look at the business requirements. I am proud of the work we have done on this very collaborative initiative between our marketing teams, business teams and IT.

Q: How do you navigate consumer skepticism or misunderstandings about insurance and/or benefits?

Education is key in helping consumers understand the value of what we do and the products we offer. We, as an industry, need to continue to educate and build trust with consumers, and I believe our partners in LIMRA and the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), as well as the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA), are essential to helping us reach the consumer and deepen their understanding of our industry. The life insurance industry plays a critical role in protecting the American family and creating the opportunity to retire with confidence.

Q: Can you share a significant achievement or milestone the CMO Committee has reached during your tenure?

The CMO Committee has done a fantastic job in creating space for CMOs to gather both in person and virtually to have open and honest dialogue around the challenges we face and the opportunities in front of us. Being able to have discussions with peers has allowed us to understand that regardless of size, structure or market, we are all facing the same issues. We have deep discussions around the role of technology, reaching underserved markets, how we collaborate more closely with distribution, and developing world-class talent. I am indebted to my colleagues for their willingness to be a resource for me and each other.

Did you accomplish the goal of your visit to our site?

Yes No