Dear Members,

Thank you for the honor and privilege of serving this great association as your 2016-2017 NAIFA-Fort Worth President. This year has been packed full of opportunities to connect with other professionals, to learn new information, and stay current on changes affecting our livelihood.

Thank you for a fantastic year. And a special thank you to our amazing 2016-2017 Board of Directors for all their hard work. They volunteered countless hours to make things happen this past year. There is true power and synergy in numbers and working together to make the job easier for everyone. Thank you also to the committee chairs and other volunteers for helping to make this association great.

In addition to volunteers, I want to say a big thank you to our Executive Director, Pat Pattison. She has worked tirelessly to make sure every event or meeting runs smoothly. She keeps the board and executive committee on task, and they run the day-to-day operations of our association. Thank you for all you do.

Finally and most importantly, I want to thank our sponsors for this year. We couldn't have made it without you. Thank you for supporting our industry and our association.

Changes in the industry have impacted NAIFA membership as a whole. Many of the captive companies are experiencing recruitment challenges. The shift seems to be moving towards independent agents and Brokerage channels. While many of these companies still support NAIFA on a national level, local General Offices are not promoting and supporting the local NAIFA chapters. As a result, membership numbers are shrinking nationwide. NAIFA-Fort Worth has seen a 40% decline during my tenure as President. Lower membership numbers are reflected in reduced sponsorship dollars. Sponsorships are almost exclusively from Brokers and are not enough to pay for the luncheons, let alone cover operating expenses for the fiscal year. Your NAIFA- Fort Worth board has done an incredible job managing expenses, while continuing to provide great benefits to our members. We also recognize something needs to change for us to continue as an entity.

Many of you are aware of the initiative by NAIFA national to fix these problems.  NAIFA 20/20 Quality Member Experience (QME) was formed with our members in mind.  In short, NAIFA recognizes the issues that are affecting the Federation, and has implemented some strategies to ensure the survival of NAIFA and reverse the trend we have been seeing over the past few years.  Stay tuned for more information as things progress.

Click Here for more information. 

With the challenges our industry and NAIFA is facing, your support is important now more than ever. We need you, our members, to tell your peers about NAIFA and why membership is crucial to our livelihood.

NAIFA acts as the voice of the agent in Washington D.C. and is constantly on the lookout for issues affecting our members. Advocacy is a major purpose of our organization. Through the combined efforts of our national staff and many, many volunteers, NAIFA was able to positively influence the new DOL ruling released this spring. We were heard, and the DOL responded favorably on many parts of the ruling. NAIFA has much more clout as we increase our membership. I encourage your colleagues to join this effort to protect our industry – not only for agents but also for our clients and future clients. Better yet, volunteer to work on the membership committee.

I urge you to call and email 2-3 of your peers and tell them about NAIFA. Send them this link http://www.naifa.org/membership/join  and ask them to take a look at what NAIFA is all about. The benefits of being a member FAR outweigh the costs, and when you consider what NAIFA does to protect our jobs, it makes sense to join. Remember, YOU are NAIFA, and without your membership and support, we won’t have an advocate for our industry.  You are the one that can turn this trend around. Call and email you peers TODAY and be the one that makes the change for the better!

Thank you for a great year. I look forward to many more years together.

Crissman Crombie
President , NAIFA-Fort Worth 2016-2017