NAIFA is partnering with the American Council of Life Insurers to coordinate state advocacy efforts on issues where the interests of the two organizations’ members and consumers intersect. The partnership will initially concentrate on seven key states: California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.

These are states where both groups have strong advocacy infrastructure in place and where they expect lawmakers and regulators to consider measures likely to impact agents and advisors, the insurance and financial services industry, and consumers. These issues include state efforts to impose restrictive standards of care or fiduciary duties on financial professionals, create state-sponsored retirement plans to compete with private-market offerings, and others.

NAIFA represents insurance and financial professionals and is the industry’s grassroots army with a strong presence in all 50 states. The association will continue to advocate on behalf of all its members and their clients in every state capital. ACLI advocates on behalf of 280 member companies dedicated to providing products and services that promote consumers’ financial and retirement security.

The state advocacy partnership grew out of federal advocacy work that NAIFA and ACLI have done together, including a lawsuit that derailed the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule for financial professionals in 2018 and coordinated efforts to promote the passage of the SECURE Act to promote retirement savings this year.

NAIFA and ACLI have worked together on state advocacy issues, as well, but the current partnership puts a renewed focus on state-level cooperation and coordination.

“We are doing things to coordinate our efforts between the two groups, knowing that when the companies and the advisors speak in a unified voice, we can get more done,” Kevin Mayeux, NAIFA CEO, told InsuranceNewsNet in a recent interview.