New Advanced Practice Center Attracts Attentive Advisors

The Advanced Practice Center is led by Executive Director Karla Kirk and was first initiated in 2019 as a joint speaker venture between NAIFA and the Society of Financial Service Professionals (FSP). The first event series in 2019 was an in-person roadshow called “Level Up,” which featured speakers such as Andrew Rinn, Ameritas, who is both a member of NAIFA and of FSP, making stops in Dallas and New Orleans. Unfortunately, COVID19 brought a stop to the popular series and required NAIFA-FSP to go virtual in 2020 and 2021. The good news from this pandemic is that we found that there are so many NAIFA members interested in the topics in advanced planning that it allowed us to break off into an advanced practice center of its own, which fully launched in Q4 2021.

With over 800 people participating in Advanced Practice Center Impact Week, it was clear that interest was high from our NAIFA membership. Members were actively looking for new ways to grow their books of business and experts to whom to turn when an advanced practice case arose. Additionally, it became clear how many NAIFA members served business owners who faced complications in ownership, wealth building and succession planning. The content provided by the experts in the Advanced Practice Center created awareness to NAIFA members on the importance of starting — and keeping — a conversation going around complex issues and the ability to easily partner