The Party's Over

When a magazine asked an insurance agent whether the meeting he had attended recently was held at a "nice" property, he immediately got defensive. As it turned out, his mistrust was not unfounded. The insurance industry is under fire from several directions, most notably lawmakers, the mainstream media, and the public. Thus there is now pressure from Congress for federal regulation of the industry. If the threat of regulation has not directly affected meetings yet, it certainly has planners attention. For insurance carriers, meetings provide the perfect opportunity to network with the independent agents who sell their policies and products. In the recent past, meanwhile, insurance meetings have clearly been cash-happy places to be. Spending thousands of dollars and taking agents away from their customers to get them pumped up does not hold as much weight as it used to.