• The unbundling of manufacturing and distribution:
  • The modern life insurance industry started with bundled manufacturing and distribution, the latter being characterized by controlled, exclusively aligned career sales forces.
• We then witnessed three sequential shifts:
  1. The disenfranchisement of the industry’s career sales forces
  2. Re-aggregation of individuals previously comprising those sales forces into stand-alone marketing entities comprised of independent producers (called producer groups, marketing companies, etc.)
  3. Most recently, initial signs of reacquisition of those marketing entities by the life insurance industry as well as by banks and others

1999 - SOA - Service or commodity? Life insurers being forced to choose in an uncertain time., by Sam Turner, Society of Actuaries - 3p