Oops! The financial services industry has some toilet paper on its shoe but is still unwilling to look down.

Happy New Year.
2012 marks a major milestone in financial advisor history, but it may take a while before it appears in the history e-books.

Online financial education and advice start-up firm, LearnVest*, (www.learnvest.com) has not only raised $25 million in venture capital, but it has also just launched the first series of prepackaged, e-enabled financial plans that are accessible to the masses and priced between $69 and $349.

How ’bout them apples?

For many years, financial services firms have either been trying to figure out how to reach the masses efficiently OR avoid them completely, focusing on the affluent and wealthy markets. After all, like Willie Sutton said, “that’s where the money is.”

While the rest of the financial services world is waiting for the younger, less affluent people to inherit the money of their boomer parents, LearnVest found a different opportunity.

Join Hosts Phil Davis and Kevin Gibson as they welcome Mike Maddock, founder of Maddock Douglas, self described as a "Innovation Company". Maddock and his team have successfully assisted many major brand companies to innovate more effectively and get great ideas to become great products and services that have we now get to enjoy!

Thinking About How Patients and Providers Can Get Health Care Done Without Any of What We Use Today

We’ve all heard about flash mobs. The first one was organized by a guy named Bill Wasik in 2003. He used social media, text messaging and email to organize about a hundred people to gather around an expensive rug on the ninth floor of Macy’s in New York. They told approaching sales and management staff that they all lived together in a warehouse and were choosing a “love rug” for their collective living room. It spawned a movement. Today, you can find hundreds of YouTube videos of crowds dancing, singing, clapping or chanting together for no other apparent reason than they wanted to do it together as a group.

The distinguishing features of flash mobs are what they aren’t. Flash mobs are not promotional. They aren’t sponsored. Flash mobs are 100 percent grass-roots driven. They have organizers but no command and control. Participation is optional. They are, by definition, local and assembled for no other purpose than to scratch some collective social itch. They happen and then fade instantly out of public view.

*For any of you who are not in the securities field who might be reading this, the U5 is the form that broker dealers use to terminate registered reps.

The U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights numero uno says that:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

But of course this does not really apply to social media for anyone who wants to keep their securities license.

While I will NOT say that broker dealers are in any way infringing upon any inalienable rights, FINRA and their interpretation of it sure makes it unattractive to say what you really think to a bunch of people who may be willing to listen. It

OK, I can’t hide this. This article is the 2.0 to the last one I wrote called What if the Insurance Industry Worked on Tips? While that idea was inspired by a Friday night with an industry colleague who had designs on reinventing the compensation system for insurance agents, we still had the rest of the weekend to figure out what the next generation of product would potentially look like.

And then it hit us—airlines, credit cards, retailers, etc., work on this “point” thing that has everyone figuring out whom they want to be loyal to, so they get points to either buy more, or use as a currency for other things they want.

As they say at Guinness…“brilliant.” But we were drinking something else.

How the heck does that apply to insurance?

Well think about this.

Suppose, just suppose, that individuals, particularly those who don’t think they can afford much insurance, whether it be health, life, auto, home, etc., etc., funneled their

Who’da thunk that a NYC cab ride to Buddakahn, a morning at Massage Envy and a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse could inspire such a revolutionary idea. (OK, wipe that expression off of your face and keep reading.)

My friend Christi and I are both insurance geeks, and we are too young to retire.

So instead of lamenting about the janky* model of distribution that we are so familiar with, we dreamed up something else last Friday night.

What if the consumer was the one to determine how much an insurance producer ultimately got paid? (Said under your breath, “yeah right,… but hmmm.”)

Zowie.

One school of thought would be that the producer would starve to death because the consumer hates when they make money “off of them.”

Another school of thought might lean into the idea that today’s consumer likes to make his/her own choices. Oftentimes, they are making decisions based on social reasons, not just whether or not they like someone, or thought they did an excellent job, but also based on social norms.

I can’t resist this.

In the last few days, S&P downgraded the pristine credit rating of two leading mutuals, two fraternals, one stock company and a country. What is next? Will planet Earth become a mere AA+, as well?

I understand their position. They cannot look past the obvious facts about gross debt, unemployment and spending patterns of the U.S., and not do something. But the question is, is it an economic issue or a political one? In many ways, it doesn’t matter. Ratings are only valuable as relative to something else. And now they are all arguing about whether or not that data is correct.

Data, schmata.

Let them argue their butts off. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the future of the rating system is going to work very differently. There will no longer be a few experts who tell the world what your grade is. The transparency and access to information will

What Biopharma Marketing Needs to Learn About the Start-up “Pivot”

I feel like I’m having the same conversation over and over. I sit down with some smart, forward-thinking pharma or biotech marketing executive and we both agree that the health care landscape is changing radically and that it’s getting harder and harder for them to hit their numbers the way they used to. We discuss all sorts of new marketing paradigms based on experiences in other sectors — social media, paid content, location marketing, buzz marketing, whatever — and then there’s a pause … “yeah, but that’s not our core competency; we’re trying to focus on what we do best.”

Problem is, that’s not really working so well. Biopharma needs to pivot.

In 2009, Eric Reis, who wrote “The Lean Startup,” coined the term “pivot” to describe “the idea that successful start-ups change directions but stay grounded in what they've learned. They keep one foot in the past and place one foot in a new possible future.

You’ve probably heard many presentations that include the bleak LIMRA statistics telling us life insurance ownership is at a 50-year record low. You may also hear over and over again about the shrinking and aging of the agent distribution system, the frailty of product profitability and the regulatory threats to some of the key benefits of buying (or selling) life insurance. These problems are not separate from each other. They are all tied at some level to the widening relevance gap between the consumer and the industry.
Houston, we have a problem.

The insurance industry is confusing and boring our future consumers to tears. Actually, they are not crying about anything; they are just walking the other way. As Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo would say, “They’re just not that into us.”

Many have suggested that the solution is to simplify the product or make it easier and less painful to buy. And of course these things would help. However there is an area of

Death … it isn’t what it used to be.

As the life insurance industry reaches its 50-year record low for life insurance ownership in the U.S. (LIMRA 2010) and companies continue to struggle with how to reach the underserved middle market, one can’t be shocked at why the government is so hell-bent on taxing the cash value. Nobody’s talking about death these days.

A recent article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review took this statistic and shoved something in our faces. The consumer would rather go without life insurance than other “necessities.” Some experts in that article are suggesting that the point is limiting risk to survivors. If your spouse has a degree and can work, the risk of destitution is far less than it was in the past when women were barefoot, pregnant and without Facebook. 

While this could certainly play a role in the decline, I also think other factors are at play here. Not only is the consequence of the death of a breadwinner gentler than it used to be, the likelihood is also less. And that