The Senate Special Committee on Aging Plans an Investigation into "Senior Advisor" Credentials

Over the past several years an array of companies have created a new "credentials industry" for those who sell insurance and other products and services to older Americans. As noted in an earlier posting to this blog, the credentials industry makes a profit by cashing in on unsuspecting consumers by conferring fancy sounding titles on those willing to pay for a few days of courses.

The idea is to con older consumers into thinking that someone with little or no education, or legitimate expertise in the complex issues of aging and elder care are, in fact, "certified experts".

Now the purveyors of these bogus credentials are about to be investigated by Congress.

According to the insurance industry trade journal, National Underwriter,the Senate Special Committee on Aging plans to investigate how insurers and related organizations qualify and train agents to sell products to senior citizens.

NU reports that Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the committee, writes in a letter to six organizations that he is uneasy about recent allegations that some insurance salespeople and financial advisors have misrepresented their expertise in senior financial affairs.

“With rising health care costs, pension plans changing from defined benefit to defined contribution, escalating long term care expenses, and ever rising day to day costs of living, seniors are turning to investments to supplement or increase their retirement income,” Kohl writes in the letter. “Sadly, as this trend has grown, so too have the number of unscrupulous actors preying on our seniors.”

The letters were sent to Old Mutual Life Insurance Company, Boston, a unit of Old Mutual P.L.C., London; Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, Golden Valley, Minn., a subsidiary of Allianz S.E., Munich; American Equity Investments Life Insurance Company, a division of American Equity Investment Life Holding Company, Des Moines, Iowa; the Society of Certified Senior Advisors, Denver; Piece of Pie Strategic Coaching, Rochester, Minn.; and Senior Insurance Training Services, Sonoma, Calif.

Kohl refers in the letters to allegations in a recent New York Times article that some firms said they teach advisors to become experts in senior financial matters while providing little or no such training.

Kohl asks the recipients of the letters to provide copies of the materials they use to train agents to become senior product specialists.

Kohl’s committee will open a formal hearing on the Times allegations in the first week of September, according to a committee spokeswoman.

Allianz Life “looks forward to working with the Senate Special Committee on Aging and will provide the information that they seek about our practices,” the company says. “We know that our practices in the area of suitable sales are among the most consumer friendly in the industry, and we look forward to sharing these practices with the committee.”

An official of the CSA says his group is at ease with the investigation.

“In spite of the fact that the CSA designation is not a financial designation, Society of Certified Senior Advisors looks forward to showing the committee how the CSA training teaches professionals from all walks of life how to benefit seniors through better communication, greater empathy, and a broader understanding of seniors' circumstances and the resources available to seniors,” says CSA President Ed Pittock.

Representatives for other companies named as recipients of the letter were not immediately available to talk to National Underwriter about the letter, but Old Mutual and American Equity told the Times they would comply with the committee’s request.

Tom Orr, owner of Senior Insurance Training, told the Times his company did not certify agents but rather only provided a continuing education program that the state of California requires of insurance agents.

The link to the NU article is
http://www.lifeandhealthinsurancenews.com/cms/nulh/Breaking%20News/2007/07/20-senate_investigates-tt

Opening the On-Ramp for Women

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/business/05shelf.html?_r=1&ref=yourmoney&oref=slogin


By STEPHEN KOTKIN
Published: August 5, 2007
Indeed, even though 59 percent of recent undergraduate degrees are held by women, more than 90 percent of the top earners at Fortune 500 companies are men. Sylvia Ann Hewlett has made it her mission to change that.

Dr. Hewlett, an economist, directs the gender and public policy program at Columbia University, then persuaded 34 companies employing 2.5 million people to participate in a “Hidden Brain Drain” task force.

“Why is it,” the task force asked, “that after decades of creating opportunities for women and proactively nurturing diversity, companies are still struggling with the challenge of retaining and advancing women?” Dr. Hewlett provides an answer in her new book, “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps” (Harvard Business School Press, $29.95).

The surveys show that while 45 percent of women who take an off-ramp from their careers face child-care challenges and another 24 percent have elder-care duties, almost one-third take a break solely because their partner’s income is enough to support the household. Women use the off-ramp because they can.


Dr. Hewlett brings to bear a great deal of evidence to support her contention that professional women are held back by an outdated career model designed for white men with wives at home.

White men are “a segment of the talent pool that is shrinking,” Jeremy Isaacs, chief executive for Europe and Asia at Lehman Brothers, tells her. In fact, the number of men with graduate degrees is projected to grow by just 1.3 percent over the next decade, compared with 16 percent for women, according to the Education Department. Small wonder that Mr. Isaacs says he “would absolutely take three days a week of someone who is truly talented.”

For an employer to allow flexibility, in other words, is not a luxury; it is necessary for marketplace survival.

Written as both advocacy and practical guide, the book offers suggestions to employers: establish a rich menu of flexible work and career arrangements, reimagine work-life issues (for example, offer benefits for elder care and not just child care), Chapter after chapter illustrates how companies like Ernst & Young, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner, Johnson & Johnson and American Express are experimenting with these approaches. And through Dr. Hewlett’s cross-company task force, they are sharing their successes. There’s movement.

Dr. Hewlett notes that, according to the surveys, the percentage of women in banking and finance who had used an off-ramp, and who wanted to return to their former employers, was zero.