NAIFA Races to the Top with Apex

During the inaugural National Leadership Conference, (then) President-Elect, Lawrence Holzberg announced the retirement of the Performance+Purpose annual meeting and the launch of a completely redesigned pure-play professional development meeting. With a bent on separating past from present, it was decided to retire the Performance+Purpose brand that has long been linked with a convention-style, election-style event instead of having professional development at its focus.

The redesigned event was unveiled by Holzberg in December 2021. The new event, called Apex, focuses on providing top leadership, sales and marketing ideas to financial services professionals. The new brand is focused on a “race to the top,” where only the top percent of advisors, and the aspiring top percent of advisors, would gather each year to share and compare success stories.

The new event will unveil at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel August 16-18, 2022. Following 2022, the Apex brand will launch into a regional conference model to allow more NAIFA members access to top speakers with more flexibility. Based on what COVID-19 has taught the industry, NAIFA decided that lowering the barriers to entry to allow more advisors to access top education, while making it far more accessible for advisors to interact with thought leaders on a local level, was something that NAIFA was uniquely designed to provide based on its redesigned structure whereby chapters collaborate with one another. Holding regional events, instead of one national event per year, also allows for more speakers, members and sponsors to participate.

“Apex focuses on a race to the top,” stated Holzberg, one of the visionaries of the redesigned event. “We intend for this to be the professional development event for agents and advisors who serve Main Street America. This is not a global event — we are focused on preparing financial advisors to better serve and protect our changing USA. American financial services professionals are the backbone and the heartbeat of the American economy — we intend to not only protect our stake in it, but to elevate the stature of the Main Street advisor and agent working every day for American families and small