Recruiting Women to Serve Women: A Natural for Woman's Life
GAMA News Journal
April 1999

Faith Cuda is a woman on a mission - helping women become personally and financially secure and independent. And after a 20-year career in insurance, she finally feels as though she's able to accomplish that mission. Ms. Cuda serves as national sales director for Woman's Life Insurance Society, an organization founded 106 years ago by women and for women, dedicated to helping them build their net worth and bolster their self-worth for their own financial independence and the protection of their families.

"Like a lot of women, I was looking for something more than money or status. I was looking for something to matter in my career, something I could sink my teeth into that I knew would make a difference in somebody's life," Cuda said. She found it in Woman's Life.

"Our focus is more direct and more committed to women than a company that's focused on shareholder return ever could be," she said. "You know, it's one thing for a company to create a •woman's' department, and it's a whole other thing for an organization to be totally dedicated to women. At Woman's Life, it's our mission, our driving force."

Ms. Cuda had an illustrious career working in life insurance, rising to the designation of managing partner of New York Life Insurance in just 6 years, something that typically takes much longer to accomplish. She was one of only a dozen women in the continental United States to hold that position at the time.

During her 16-year insurance career, Ms. Cuda managed units of agents who produced more than $1 million first-year commissions annually. Because of that impressive sales management record, and based on her own personal production, Ms. Cuda received several industry awards, including NQA and NSAA of the GAMA Bronze Award. She also was one of only 25 managing partners to receive the Manager's Round Table Award in 1990. She holds no less than three professional designations, including Certified Life Underwriter (CLU), Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC), and Life Underwriter Training Council (LUTC).

The list goes on, but you get the picture - this lady had the bull by the horns. An executive position in a high-profile company, pulling down a cushy six-figure income. So how did Woman's Life®, - a relatively small company, by comparison, and certainly not one with the name recognition of her former employer - lure her away?

"You get to a point in your life where the money and the status don't matter any more. I wanted to make a real difference in the lives of women and their families, and after talking to Woman's Life, I realized that was the best possible place to achieve that dream," she said.

As national sales director, Ms. Cuda is responsible for all sales operations. Her biggest challenge is fully developing each of the organization's 15 geographic regions around the country. That involves hiring regional directors, recruiting sales representatives and developing the right people to lead the regions. It's no small task when you're searching in a tight job market for a very special breed of representative.

"I'm looking for strong people, who have a passion and feel committed to our mission of security and independence," Cuda said. "We're also looking for a lot of experience in recruiting, building and developing agencies with a definite success background. Producers who are independent in their thinking, who act like entrepreneurs and are aggressive in what they want to achieve."

A tall order, but one Ms. Cuda is having no trouble filling. "I'm able to entice many top performers from throughout the nation. It's a caring thing," she said. "If you're committed to helping women become independent and secure, you're going to see that there's really only one organization out there - Woman's Life."

Ms. Cuda is finding that Woman's Life is particularly attractive to women producers, and she relates her success in recruiting top talent to the similar rise in female entrepreneurs. "They've been in corporations where they had no voice and were not permitted to have an opinion - been there, done that. Now, they're putting all those skills to work for themselves."

Within the last year, Ms. Cuda has filled three of the 15 regional director slots with insurance veterans:

• Peggy Fortson, a former leading New York Life agent specializing in business planning and employee benefits;
• Martha Harmon, with 23 years of experience in financial services, sales and marketing as well as extensive skills in managing general agents and sales representatives; and
• Diana Pringle, who has devoted her entire 15-year career to insurance sales.

Ms. Cuda expects to add two more regional directors in 1999. Filling the remaining 10 posts will continue into the year 2000 and beyond. In its latest review of the Society, A.M. Best cited this regional distribution system as an "initiative which we believe should provide the platform for growth."

In turn, each of the Society's regional directors is responsible for assisting existing agents and recruiting new agents in their regions to deliver the Woman's Life® message to women and their families. Woman's Life® works with independent representatives from whom the Society requires a commitment to its mission and that they write a minimum of $6,000 of first-year annualized commission with the Society each year. Woman's Life® also pursues strategic alliances with groups of established agency systems whose vision and mission penetrate the female marketplace and align with the Society's philosophy in order to broaden the its base of operations as well as expand and grow its production results for membership in the Society.

The directors are assisted in their efforts by a full-time national sales training manager, Connie Wagner, who observes, "If you want to market to women, your gender doesn't matter, but knowledge about the vast concerns women have and their buying patterns are the key to successfully marketing to women."

There is great opportunity for insurance sales to the women's market. Consider the following:

• Forty-three percent of Americans with assets greater than $500,000 are women.
• As of 1997, women account for 46 percent of the total U.S. labor force.
• The number of working women has doubled since 1970 - from 30 million to 60 million in 1997.
• Approximately 62 percent of married women work outside the home, with fully 48 percent of those working wives now providing half or more of their family's income.
• Twenty percent of working wives, or 10.2 million women, earn more than their husbands.
• Nearly 8 million businesses are owned by women, posting $2.3 trillion in sales annually and employing more than 18 million people.
• Ninety-five percent of women make financial decisions for their families.
• The number of women in the workforce has as well as contracts, incentives and benefits for the representatives they seek to select and recruit to Woman's Life®.

At Woman's Life, I'm able to put my stamp on this organization, to build its sales system in my image. Yes, there's a risk in doing that, but there are also tremendous rewards. Here, I feel like I'm really contributing and I'm committed to making this company become known as THE premier provider of financial and personal security to women and their families. With the right people connected in the right way, the sky's the limit!"

Women's growing participation and advancement in the workforce, as well as the increasing number of women who are gaining control of financial assets due to death and divorce, would seemingly make them ripe for life insurance sales. Consider this:

• Of the total U.S. labor force, 57.8 million, or 46 percent, are women.
• The number of working women has nearly doubled since 1970 - from 30 million to early 60 million in 1997.
• Approximately 62 percent of married women work outside the home, with fully 48 percent of those working wives now providing half or more of their family's income.
• Twenty percent of working wives, or 10.2 million women, earn more than their husbands.
• Forty-three percent of Americans with assets over $500,000 are women.
• Nearly 8 million businesses are owned by women, collectively posting $2.3 trillion in sales annually and employing more than 18 million people.

With this shift in family income has come a big shift in attitudes about family money management. A 1996 insurance industry study revealed that 90 percent of women no longer think investing is a man's job and 85 percent of men agree. And these figures don't even account for the large number of women who have never been married, as well as divorced women, who are the sole decision-makers about their economic futures.

Plus a public opinion poll by the Insurance Information Institute found that 49 percent of women have a favorable view of the industry, compared to 42 percent of men.

A gender gap in insurance purchasing
So, it's safe to conclude that there are a lot of women out there who have the ability and the desire to purchase insurance. Yet, there's a wide disparity in insurance coverage for men and women. A 1990 LIMRA study confirmed that adult males accounted for 48 percent of all life insurance policies purchased, while adult females accounted for 38 percent. At the same time, the average amount of insurance purchased for men was almost double the average amount purchased for women.

What could account for this insurance gap between men and women? Connie Wagner, national sales training manager for Woman's Life Insurance Society®, observes a big difference in the way men and women buy insurance and financial products.

Connie recalls her experience as an agent. "For example, men understood the values and price structures of term versus universal life, but women understood the emotional side of the purchase. They understood the commitment involved with the purchase of life insurance - commitment in purchasing protection for someone you love and someone who loves you. They understood the benefits and security a comprehensive insurance program offered them as part of a family unit."

And women form a bond with their agents, Connie explains. "One of the biggest differences was that women also formed a trust relationship with me, the person who had introduced the program to their family. I was perceived by women as a seller of services, and by men as a seller of products."

A different marketing approach
Women's attitudes towards insurance and towards their insurance agents obviously impacts the way we market to women. Connie concludes, "If you want to market to women, your gender doesn't matter, but knowledge about the vast concerns women have and their buying patterns are the key to successfully marketing to women."

Even as women increase their presence in the workplace, they still face some basic financial realities which are very different from those of men:

• Performing comparable jobs in the workplace, women still earn an average of only 74.4 percent of men's wages. And this figure marks a downward trend from the previous year when women earned 75 percent of men's wages.
• Women often enter the workforce later in life than men and have shorter work histories because of family responsibilities.
• There were 12 million single-parent families headed by women in the United States in 1992 - a figure that has more than doubled since 1970, when there were only 5.6 million such families.
• Families maintained by women had the lowest median income of all family types in 1991 - $16,692 - compared to $40,995 for married-couple families and $28,351 for families maintained by single men.
• Women are only 50 percent as likely as men to work for a company offering a retirement plan.
• Almost half of men over age 65 receive a pension. The comparable figure for women: 22 percent.
• Women live an average of five to seven years longer than men; on average, they will spend the last one-third of their lives not married, but single, either through widowhood or divorce.
• Nearly 75 percent of the elderly poor are women, even though 80 percent of them weren't poor before they were widowed or divorced.
• Many women are faced with chronic disabilities later in life; 80 percent of the people in nursing homes are women.

To serve the women's market, agents must become educated about the unique needs of women and then become a specialist in meeting their insurance and financial needs. They must further understand that the sales process is vastly different between men and women.

Recruiting a different kind of agent
Woman's Life Insurance Society® is dedicated to helping women become emotionally and financially independent.